To think that someone should feed this child

[Bardette]

I work in a number of different schools, visiting once a week to work with selected children.
One particular boy troubles me. His family has heavy social services involvement. His mum is being encouraged to 'step up' and take responsibility for her children. There is a plan in place with certain criteria she has agreed to follow.
One of these criteria is to give the children breakfast before they go to school, and because of this he is not allowed to go to breakfast club any more.
So he gets no breakfast.
Mum is, for whatever reason, not giving him breakfast, and school will not because of the agreement.
AIBU to think that this is wrong? I assume that the school are feeding back to social services and they will take it up with mum, but in the mean time this poor little lad has to go to school hungry. He is 6.

Where are all the posters saying it's a woman's right to choose?

That's the usual response if you dare to point out someone's thoughtless behavior.

The theory in my county is that a parent is entitled to the opportunity to parent her/his child. So, the baby would be placed in foster care, and the mother would be given a parenting plan to give her the opportunity to clean up. If she succeeds, the baby gets to go back, if not, it can be placed for adoption.

it's horrible for existing children suffering but what's worse being ripped away from the only family you know without a chance being given.

Yes, it's traumatic to be taken from the only family you'ver ever known, but that's preferable to having to live in an abusive and/or neglectful household, IMO.

Ohio.

Surely if a little six year old boy who is known to be in vulnerable circumstances is turning up at school without breakfast and hungry whoever realises this has a moral duty to feed him. I cannot believe there are people on here who appear to be suggesting otherwise. Where is the humanity in letting this poor mite go hungry.

alovelytrain - I think that I watched the first part of the documentary you referred to a few months ago and assuming that is the case I am not sure I follow.

My impression was that the 3 year old was sleeping with the mother, not on the floor with dog poo, which is very different.

There was a scene where the manager was telling the cw how to achieve removal of the child ie allow to fail. Does that not seem wrong to you?

The SWs produced a care plan but did not explain the significance of it. What they should have said was "if you do not follow this to the T then we will remove your child" surely? This is probably the whole leave to fail approach which I think is fundamentally wrong.

One of the key concerns the SWs had was that the child wasn't talking and was still in nappies, and that this was down to neglect; however, the case paediatrician spent time with the family and concluded that the speed of development of the child was due to genetic factors not neglect. Yet the social workers did not appear to reconsider at this point and change their "allowing to fail" tack

Not once were the psychological affects of removal discussed and I am not sure that that consideration is part of the process - but it should be.

The SWs appeared to leave the child asleep on a swingaround office chair in an office apparently on his own while a meeting was going on with his parents in a different room - I do hope that is wrong and that there was someone in the room with him

The child's father said that the first cw had rigid views and asked for a different one to work with them and the manager said no - that it was "team work" but the first cw would retain the interface - it was a blunt response which to me seemed utterly unhelpful, as there was no explanation, such as workload or budgetary restraints - could the communication there by the SW not have been improved vastly?

I think without doubt the family could have been assisted by some outside help - but that is what I meant in an earlier post about money being better spent on that sort of home help rather than removal.

I only watched the first part and I feel slightly reluctant to say all this online, but I also feel that there are fundamental problems in the system which need to be reviewed.

I agree with some of what you say, but I think my line would be in a different place to yours, iyswim. I don't know for sure abut the above obviously as you only see a snapshot.

You would probably discover that the child wasn't getting in early enough for breakfast club

Then a better condition woukd be "get child to breakfast club on time or give her breakfast before arrival at school"

The family on the documentary were not co sleeping. The boy slept on the couch.

The boy was not spoken to or interacted with - after a few months with foster parents his speech improved.

The father was hostile and aggressive to the SW (understandably.)

I don't believe we have a moral duty to feed children that are not our own.

I don't believe we have a moral duty to feed children that are not our own.

elderflower Can I ask why not?

Because that then places responsibility and therefore ultimately blame at the door of the people who are not at fault.

elderflower - I watched it a few months ago, but if memory serves there was only one occasion when the boy slept on the couch. There was no suggestion that he slept on the floor.

The SWs said the father was aggressive - in the bit I saw my perception was that there was anger and fear and irritation but not threatening behaviour - but I may be wrong.

In relation to speech and toilet training I totally agree that the stimulation and opportunity given to a child will impact on its development, but what might also be relevant is that a child will need to use words more to communicate with people he does not know, so there woudl be that added impetus, and as children grow older they talk more. The point was the paediatrician made an assessment and communicated that to the parents, that she did not think it was down to neglect, as such (as I understood it).

Re the feeding surely you are saying that you do not feel a moral duty, not that "we" do not have a moral duty? I feel a moral duty.

What I mean is that if I was aware of a child in my sons class who was not having food to eat, I do not feel it is my responsibility to feed him. They doesn't mean i might not choose to do so out of compassion but it would be a choice.

But this child is not 'being starved' - he is missing a meal that tends to be for many people a meal that is optional or is often lighter than the other two.

If he wasn't getting his dinner/supper would people tell the OP she needed to go to his home and provide one? Or would that be seen as unrealistic, would that be seen as something his parents need to provide?

I don't believe we have a moral duty to feed children that are not our own

We do if we run a breakfast club and allow every other child to use it.

That's a misleading 'we" though, isn't it?

Some of the posts here suggest or even explicitly state that the OP, knowing about this situation, is morally obliged to provide food for the child from her own pocket which I think is an unfair position to put her in.

Someone needs to have the compassion to feed this hungry child in the morning while all the paperwork gets sorted out FFS

And in the evening? At weekends and school holidays?

Which may be why the plan in the OP says the school should not be feeding the child in question (if indeed that's what the plan says)

Assuming the plan does say this,it is still not acceptable.

They can gather their evidence another way and should not be contributing towards it.

It is perfectly acceptable for a child who is entitled to use a breakfast club to do so and there is no good reason to prohibit it in an attempt to gain evidence.

If other children in the school use the breakfast club without having concerns raised about it being used then so should this child. Social care is not about setting the bar higher for a individual parent than you do for other parents with children at the school.

And in the evening? At weekends and school holidays?

There are plenty of ways and services available to support or check up on mum feeding the child during these times.

The team I used to work with had access to a intervention service that was intended to do this sort of thing as well as help with other parenting issues like bedtime routines that sort of thing, this service still exists.

But they wouldn't be the responsibility of the OP

Of course I am, ALovelyTrain. I do not need you to tell me about the abuse and neglect that goes on.

So feeding a starving neglected child wouldn't have helped. He's dead now. Does that help?

I don't give a shit if a school feeding a child absolves the parents of the responsibility. They clearly don't care about feeding him so leaving him until they get the message won't help. They don't want to get it and in the mean time the child is being neglected and abused.

It wouldn't have helped because Daniel's parents fed him salt which forced him to vomit.

Daniel was badly let down by SS and my heart goes out to him.

But the people who caused him harm were his parents.

I know it was her mother and her partner, not his father, who lcaused him harm but everyone else who knew something was wrong and didn't do anything or enough to help him also let him and themselves down.

Mistakes made years ago are still being made and it is not acceptable.

It is a minefield I agree, but papering the cracks only goes so far.

A child not being given breakfast is not in itself abusive or neglectful. It's the attitudes and the reasons for this that are. That is why just giving a child breakfast (or a bed to cite an earlier example) is not in itself the answer because the lack of breakfast or lack of bed is not the problem. Not really.