Kaylea Titford: aibu not to understand why safeguarding concerns were not raised beforehand?

[LumpenProle1]

Lockdown started in March 2020 and the poor girl died in October, in a badly neglected state.

Surely this neglect just didn’t come out of nowhere in 7 months? Surely no one becomes 22 stone in 7 months?

I don’t understand why concerns were not evident in school or at the GP beforehand? It seems this serious neglect was likely to have been evident and it seems strange that someone outside the home did not raise concerns.

I am RAGING at the pathetic sentences handed down to her murderers.
Mum- sentenced to 6yrs but will be out after 4yrs.
Dad- sentenced to 7.5yrs but will be out after 5yrs.

The justice said “no evidence of targeted cruelty”!! 😡

Yes there was! Cruelty to their bedridden daughter that they left to die in truly horrific and abhorrent conditions. Calculated, cold cruelty to ignore her texts and pleas for help for months and in her last few hours, her screams for help.

This is such an upsetting case.

Poor Kaylea RIP
So sorry your parents are utter pieces of shit that deserve life in prison.

Why did the mother get a more lenient sentence than the father? They are both as guilty.

Because she pleaded guilty.

In the photos there is a catheter. Would nurses not have been carrying out home visits to attach it/ renew it sporadically?

Its just horrific the idea of her calling for help from the very people that should have had her best interests at heart

i agree completely with Onnabugeisha

No, her mum was a professional carer and was supposed to do it.

Are there other kids with similar disabilities now courting bad obesity?

She was as good as tortured. That poor, poor kid.

I think the reason the safeguarding was not flagged up before was that she had long struggled with her weight but she had previously been very active (so likely wasn't seen aa such an issue)

Where the abuse came in was the fact that they let her become bed bound, did nothing to control her diet once she lost the ability for independent movement and allowed such a poor state of hygiene that it led to her death

I can see how this could have been missed during lock down especially as all reports were that she was very independent and active before and the mother refused outside help

They basically made the girl a prisoner in her own home 😞

I also think that there is a big problem with how weight and disability are viewed in general, weight problems amongst the disabled are often not given the same priority as amongst the non disabled and it can be seen as almost expected that a disabled person should just accept being overweight

Welcome to rural West Wales... Truly, no-one gives a shit until things go badly wrong. This whole case is utterly, heartbreakingly disgraceful.

I agree. I can't stop thinking about what poor Kaylea went through.

That poor girl. RIP Kaylea. I'll never understand how her parents could do this.

The covers a lot of the case in detailing but is very upsetting www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/live-updates-kaylea-titford-death-26358778
It specifically says there weren't any concerns before lockdown and the judge didn't feel it was a lapse (i.e. there were periods of intermittent bad care over her life and this was the worse), rather all evidence available showed that care up until lockdown had been adequate, if not ideal. You only have to look at any other cases to see that for social services the bar to intervene care has to be far below adequate.

The article says the last time she was weighed (in 2018) she was 16 stone, so obviously still clearly obese but able to fit in her wheelchair, do sport, move around school etc., possibly had access to slightly healthier food. So yes it does seem to have mainly been lockdown - with no reason for her to have to get her up (as she couldn't do so independently) her parents just clearly never bothered so she wasn't moving at all and could only eat the high calorie takeaways they fed her so unsurprising she put on a lot of weight in a short space of time. TBH even if she wasn't so obese it wouldn't have been a drastically different outcome - she would have still developed sores, wounds which became infected due to lack of movement and cleaning.

It really is horrendous, poor girl.

This is so heartbreakingly awful and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this poor young girl.

Hanging’s too bloody good for them if you ask me.

What I don't understand is if they didn't want to care for her, why didn't they call SS and tell them to take her? Ring for an ambulance and tell them to take her away? Call the police and say they were leaving her, or even just get her in her wheelchair and dump her at a hospital, before it was too late.

Were they abusive before this started happening? She seemed clean and well cared for in pics of her before.

I cannot get my head round letting your DC get into that state after caring for her 15 years, to let her die in pain knowing you as good as murdered her, face prison with the whole world knowing what you'd done rather than go through the potential embarrassment of ditching your kid onto someone else. At least she'd still be alive.

Maybe slightly understandable if there was only one parent who shut themselves away, couldn't cope, suffering from MH issues but there were two of them. Neither capable of rational thought? Her Dad held down a job through it all.

Was it because they would lose her disability benefits? Absolutely chilling and beyond belief. They literally tortured their own child.

This! The sentences seem very lenient.

I wish she had called an ambulance for herself. Poor girl :( absolutely tragic

The judge said that both parents blamed the other one and have carried on refusing to admit the killing. They’re not bothered.

The judgment is horrifying.

Both parents tried every trick in the book to avoid jail. DM faked depression; DF said he was ‘just lazy’. Chillingly, he thought that would be enough to get him off. They tried to claim lockdown damaged them, but they both worked throughout.

DM has now been diagnosed with depression, some two years later. She didn’t have anything wrong with her when K was dying. DF has had skunk psychosis numerous times, but was healthy during the child’s decline.

The parents express no remorse or regret, except once where the DM was coaxed into it by her solicitor in front of the judge.

The details of K’s injuries are 🤮 - one that is repeatable is that she put on 10 stone in lockdown cos they only ate takeout. K died alone, after her parents screamed in rage at her for crying for help.

I wish I hadn’t read the judge’s summary.
At least the other DC have been saved.

I don’t believe in evil, but then you read the facts. Sadly the killers will be out in 2025.

Newtown isn’t in West Wales it is in Mid Wales.

it is horrifically sad and shouldn’t have happened regardless of location.

I also cannot get the thought of what that poor girl went through out of my head. To read that she literally was left screaming for help and her dad text her to tell
her to shut up in the hours before she died….and she had txt her mum to ask her to help clean up because she had done a poo, and ‘I can’t help it mum’. And how long was she left for in that state to die of infected wounds and bed sores. She must have been in horrendous pain and scared. Her parents should have been charged with her murder, I don’t understand why the sentences are so lenient.
And then to hear that her mum was a professional carer…..how could she let her own daughter suffer that way.
RIP Kaylea, you deserved so much better. 😢

In a week of grim news this has really upset me. Absolute disgrace that the sentence isn't murder.

I am really upset too and keep thinking of Kaylea. I think how could her parents have done this? And how could the justice give them a slap on the wrist for the slow death by torture they did to her? Are disabled children worth so little?

I keep thinking what Kaylea must have gone through hour after hour, day after day for six months. I looked at photos of her “room” it wasn’t even a bedroom…she was in some box room and they’d piled junk around her like it was storage for broken things. Nothing to say this is a child’s bedroom. It’s so heartbreaking.

And her parents will be out in 4/5yrs and can carry on like they did nothing. It’s wrong.

Ah ok. Thank you.

Can't stop thinking about what they poor girl went through and how they made her live... her room was total squalor... there was a deep fat fryer in her bedroom.. just awful. :(