To be incredulous that this little boy wasn't protected (warning - distressing news coverage)

[LEMisdisappointed]

news article

I am so angry - yet another child tortured and murdered by his "parents". The school had written comments in the "concerns" book, yet still this poor little mite was starved and beaten systematically over a period of time. Do professionals become numb to childrens needs? Does no one check FFS????

My DD is a healthy child (thankfully) and never taken to the GP as she hardly ever gets sick, the only times she has been in the past few years are for injuries - nothing serious apart from biting through her tongue (ouchie), another time she burnt her hand and more recently a horse trod on her toe. The nurse commented that she was "accident prone" and asked if we had a social worker Fair enough actually, although DP was offended, although no follow up action taken. It looks worse i guess because they are the only notes on her medical record since she was a baby (shes 8 now). Everyone talks about "safeguarding" but it appears that they are just paying lip service to it and children are suffering either through unintentional neglect or willful cruelty.

I don't understand, after the whole Baby P thing that this can still slip through the net

theluckiest

Is anyone else concerned that the Every Child Matters agenda which was brought about following the equally horrific case of Victoria Climbie has been quietly scrapped, sidelined and funding pulled? OK, it wasn't perfect by any means but any scheme which attempts to implement a safety net between schools, SS and other agencies, for these incredibly vulnerable kids must be worth something surely?

Yes. I think i'd be right in saying that this has led to a return to reactive child protection culture rather than a culture of early intervention, safeguarding.

The practice that was implemented by this policy didn't even get an opportunity to become embedded. The culture of short-termism that has become the norm is the fault of the governments. No one can dig -in and do a job any more, we are all trying to navigate an ever changing political landscape an getting swallowed up by bureaucracy to focus on the job in hand.

Are medical practitioners authorised to discuss concerns with schools? And vice versa?

Genuine question.

Jake, I think that is quite a defeatest attitude. Resigning ourselves to the deaths of children by abusers is frankly not good enough. These people weren't particularly clever at covering their tracks. The Mother would give him half a sandwich for his lunch, the boy was ravenous and yet people believed the lies despite the evidence in front of them contradicting this. The woman missed 3 appointments to sort out her child's emaciation and yet no one considered that to be a concern.

people show a real lack of understanding of this case and of how SS work

see they can't just swoop in a take children - there has to be a legal reason to do so - in this case there wasn't - a Doctor has decided he had a genetic condition and that was why he was thin and hungry

SS and the school DID try to do something - as did the police and the health visitors

There will be a SCR and the facts will come out

Please bare in mind that services for children have taken the BRUNT of the massive local authority cuts imposed by this government - social services, Connexions, Youth Service, EWO's Parent Support Staff, TA's, Sure Start Centers etc etc - all agencies at the forefront of Safeguarding

people are trying to stop a tidal wave with a single bag of sand - it's horrible

I dont know about defeatist although I can certainly see why it might come across that way. Just realistic.

I agree though that we cannot simply say "well these things happen". It needs to be picked apart in a serious case review.

I would hate to work in child protection. ...the responsibility of knowing that one wrong decision could lead to a child being seriously injured or murdered is awful.

But as is often the issue, there will have been a catalogue of mistakes and missed opportunities.

...and totally agtee with gordys last post.

Poor boy - it's heartbreaking.
I just don't understand why people do vile things like this :(

How patronising Gordy, are you suggesting that people can't have an opinion on something unless they have experienced it themselves?

Of course they did 'something' as they are duty bound to do so- it is whether enough was done. This boy had never been seen by the GP he was registered with, he'd had none of his 'injections'. When he broke his arm this information must have appeared on his medical records but no suspicions were raised. He missed 3 appointments regarding his emaciation- hardly a Mother showing great concern about her son wasting away in front of her. Wasn't this behaviour odd, raise any suspicions? The Mother told medical professions he had a rare eating disorder- why did they just take her word for it. The Mother gave him half a sandwich for his packed lunch, common sense may point to this being the cause of his low weight I.e the lack of food. He had both eyes bruised a week before he died, no written record of this was made FFS!

Of course children can't just be taken off their parents but an effective system would ensure that happened when It was essential in preventing abuse, ultimately the death of a child. Children should have the same rights of protection under the law as adults. That is not the case currently, it is barbaric!

There are a few people on here who just do not understand the constraints of the law.

Are medical practitioners authorised to discuss concerns with schools? And vice versa?

There are confidentiality issues. But personally I think that parents should be required to sign a form, when registering a child for school, giving permission for HCP to discuss a child with the school in the event of any concern for the child's wellbeing, as long as it's documented.

Where safeguarding children is concerned then information can be shared freely.

All info between mdt,local authority,gp,nhs is shared regards safeguarding

Some are complaining about cuts by this current government but other high profile cases were during the previous government. We cannot keep blaming cuts, inexperienced SW's etc. Its taking the easy option.

The fact is that this wasnt a high priority case until he was murdered by these two scum bags. It would be interesting to see what calibre of SW was asigned to this case. How much experience did they have? We cannot keep rolling out senior management saying 'lessons will be learnt' or trying to find a scapegoat SW to take the blame.

"Where safeguarding children is concerned then information can be shared freely."

It can be but I'd bet a good amount of money that in this case, it really wasn't. Lack of communication between professionals is one of the common denominators in all of these tragic and preventable cases. I have read many, many serious case reviews.

Idle speculation is pointless.the scr will systematically examine evidence

Too many armchair social workers on this thread. I'd bet they'd also be the first ones shouting if SW intervened and parents were found to be innocent (plenty of those sort of threads on here) orvif SW go in heavy on spurious anonymous tipoffs (ditto).

These parents conned the doctors, they were clearly very skilled at conning many people. As to blaming teachers that's ridiculous, they are not first line here.

i phoned the NSPCC directly once about something Id witnessed. their answer? it has to go through SS first.

so i phoned SS. their answer?
have i tried the NSPCC?

they were just passing the buck one to another.

phoned police -999 and they told me to phone the non-emergency number!

meanwhile i could hear the abuse through the walls, i put the phone to the wall and said this wasnt the 1st time id heasrd this.

absolute FA anyone did. police answer- ''well make a note of it and please report if you hear it again, and try SS''.

one to another.

person in question was only saved as in the end I and another neighbour phoned an ambulance. ONLY then was child taken away from ''parents''.

and of course on the news the usual standard excuse ''we were looking into it, there will be a full investigation....''. shit.

and it will happen again and again and again with STILL the standard answers.

NO excuses any more. no excuses about red tape and logging and monitoring etc etc.

lazy - but the signs were there. It doesnt sound like the services were joined up. Individually it might not look suspicious but once you look at the case overall its a horrible mess.

handcream Hindsight is a great thing. In isolation, all the signs were not there. Each professional saw a difference slice of the pie. I agree that information sharing was lacking.

So, what are we going to do about making things more joined up. Who was looking at the whole picture? Answer - no one.

Discussion Is an essential part of a democracy Scottish. This is headline news because it is astonishing that such an awful tragedy was left to unfold. It is right that people are discussing this and that this country thinks about how it wants child protection services to work. Deliberation is key to democracy, it is not 'pointless' and can continue alongside any SCR!

Which brings me up to my rambling post about the NHS earlier. We only have to deal with 2 teams - the consultant at the hospital and the GP and there are massive gaps in communication. Things go wrong.

Imagine how chaotic the system is with so many agencies involved. Messages not getting through. Inconsistencies arising. Does anyone notice?

As always it comes down to poor communication caused by overworked professionals with too many cases and too much paperwork.

No doubt money will be found to plough into an investigation, several reports, a token payoff or two for those at the top to depart quietly. What a shame that money couldn't have been found from the outset to pay for a few more social workers.

No Goldenbear I am suggesting people base their indignation on fact - surely it's better to understand how social services work before ranting that they didn't take him away?

I suspect tibias impossible to design a systemic approach that can deal with parents both determined to abuse and kill their child, and capable of fooling all the professional services they dealt with.

The only way you could probably stop this is giving SS huge intervention rights over parents, which of course would then have most of the people on this thread frothing about interfering bureaucrats causing misery by taking kids away for false alarms.