Another angel killed

[Thomasina79]

RIP little Finley.

why, why are such babies returned to monsters like the two who murdered baby Finley. Only 10 months old.

@MorrisZapp I think it’s highly unlikely that they did contact the police. If they had then it would have resulted in a police visit to the home. There is no police visit in the timeline. If the police had failed to visit following a report about a mother saying that she her partner had just tried to kill her and she felt her baby wasn’t safe with him then that would also have merited an entry in the timeline, I think.

It will be interesting to know who the Guardian was and what their position was. Often when SWs recommendations are dismissed by courts its because the Guardian is not in agreement.

I wonder who the judge was as well who agreed with the shorter transition home.

DS is adopted. He was returned dozens of times to birth Mum aged between 1-6 years old. To be assaulted or neglected time and time again.
He 28 now and moved to us when he was six. The crazy thing is, people expect him to be normal now. People imagine you can get over that sort of thing. He is the most resilient person I know, but very far from your average person.

It seems that they didn't and didn't report it to SS.

I said on another thread on chat that I’m sick of this obsession with keeping families together. You see posts on here from people who’ve had their kids taken away claiming it was only because the house was a bit messy which is absolute bollocks. The bar for removal is so high that it had to be way more than that.

I also said that that foster mother who was killed last week would probably still be alive if the 12 year she was fostering had been removed as an infant. By being in foster care he would have still had contact with his dregs parents who ruined him so he had no chance.

Some people aren’t fit to be parents, don’t fuck up their kids lives trying to help them work out how to do it.

I think posters should realise that the transition conditions of Findlay returning home was never stuck to by SS. He was supposed to have home visits. They allowed the father to cancel them all. When the SW did see Findlay, she ignored bruising and didn't try to lift him. Had she have done so, he would have been in extreme pain. They wouldn't have been passing home inspections on the two occasions that the SW did get in. There's most definitely been failures. It is worth noting that if the neighbours, once again as in all these cases, had have phoned the police because of what they heard, he would still be alive. We stil get threads on here were people are told to myob.

I’m sat here breastfeeding my 8 month old feeling sick at how anyone could do this. It’s unfathomable. Poor, poor baby Finley. There are so many good people desperate for a child that could have given him a loving and safe home. Absolutely heartbreaking 💔

I remember the horror of the Victoria Climbié case. In the aftermath I heard an interview with a social work lecturer on the radio. She said that the biggest problem was a lack of common sense amongst social workers, that they wanted to trust carers and I do get that. We all want things to be peaceful and calm. She said that common sense was the one thing that the training cannot teach. Don’t we always need to err and on the side of caution? If I was a social worker I’d rather grovel in apology than have a death on my conscience, child or otherwise.

This is why I stopped fostering, too many children are returned home when they shouldn't be.! 😢

I am really struggling after reading about this, how was no one, grand parents, aunties / uncles, social services not checking up on him, how could anything think these two scum bags could care for a baby?

@summerhillgang There’s every chance that the wider family were also highly dysfunctional and troubled. I think the fact that a relative received that message from her about her thinking he was going to kill her and didn’t alert police and social care says a lot. Earlier in December she’d told people the baby had injuries that she didn’t know the causes for and was unwell and again, nobody reported that.

It’s also interesting that the timeline ITV has says that the mother “informed social care” that she was 20 weeks pregnant in September 2019. Most people don’t tell social care when they get pregnant so it’s possible that she was herself a care leaver or otherwise known to social care even before becoming pregnant.

@summerhillgang we don't know the information, however if a child is removed and then returned by a court, there has to be an agreed care plan that sets out what professionals will see the child and how often. It's mentioned in the news report that they cancelled appointments and also claimed to have covid (at the time it would have been before vaccines and it would have been a senior manager making a decision about whether workers should go in anyway)

Obviously if parents avoid professionals it rings alarm bells but it was a really short time period - 39 days - that he was home, it's not clear from the news when the child was thought to have been injured but its not necessarily the case that there would have been enough of a pattern of missed appointments to raise alarm bells.

Sadly abusers will do all they can to hide evidence too. We know in baby P's case parents out chocolate around his mouth to hide bruises. Some parents will insist a worker can't wake a sleeping baby, and that's a difficult one to argue against (preference of course is you try again same day or next day different time, but a social workers diary rarely allows that and it's the goodwill of workers when things like this get done usually - I've gone back out to families at 7pm in order to see a child awake, there's no paid overtime in this job and it's hard to have boundaries around your own family's needs)

They don’t. They deserve unspeakable cruelty to be visited upon them until their hearts stop.

Poor baby, haven’t read it, DM did and was in tears about it.

For the life of me I don’t understand why the parents took the baby home? Why have the baby at all. I will never understand. Thank god I don’t make these decisions, I would struggle to carry on.

All the women suffering with miscarriage, conception.. this must hurt like hell. Life isn’t fair.

I hope they go through hell in prison at the hands of the other prisoners.

Yep, £344 in UC plus child benefit will probably buy a fair bit of weed.

Boden is an absolute monster and Marsden's scarcely any better. And I bet the relatives she rang that night are really regretting not calling the police - why the fuck didn't they do something?

50 children are killed a year i just heard

'For the life of me I don’t understand why the parents took the baby home? Why have the baby at all'

I know, for people with normal empathy and emotional responses, it makes no sense at all. I'm guessing they did want him, but they wanted him on their terms.

Truly heartbreaking 💔 such a tragic outcome. But, people are being very unreasonable to blame on SS. They are underfunded and underpaid, still trying to make a difference. I work for Civil services on much lower wage than I can get working privately because I feel I am making a difference. Its very easy to blame SS or government but the reality is his parents are bad people drug addicts, who should have never been handed this innocent poor child. They are to blame, no one else apart from the mindset that every child belongs to biological parents.

I work in SG too and I echo every word. Always, always report. That poor tiny baby, my heart breaks to think of what he went through.

It is absolutely heartbreaking. As a social worker myself I can say that the threshold to say a child cannot return home (and given this little boys age to say he should be adopted) is so high. For a baby where adoption is a potential outcome the SW will have to be able to evidence that 'nothing else will do' snd that parents care isn't even 'good enough' and that is very difficult.

I am assuming they knew this wasn't the right plan but couldn't evidence enough to say 'nothing else will do' it hence why the transition home plan was proposed over six months and not the standard few weeks. Again I am assuming the social worker knew/thought the plan wouldn't be successful/that they could gather enough evidence in those six months but the court overruled them. Totally hypothesising but that's my view.

The poor baby, it's horrendous and tonight I am thinking about him.

Just sat in tears wishing I hadn't read that. Utterly heartbreaking to think of what that poor baby boy went through in his short life 💔 Why does this keep happening? Just why? How can anyone inflict such cruelty on a baby. I have no words.

I thought the same. Hopefully they'll get hell inside.

yabu to start this poll

in what world would it be reasonable ffs

The Constance Martin threads made me want to bang my head against the wall. How can anyone who pays even the slightest attention to the news believe children are always better off with their mothers? There are so many high-profile cases that prove the opposite.

I work in this area. There are so many children in the care system who have been removed from parents. What there aren't so many of are competent foster carers or prospective adoptive parents.

You want these children, quite rightly, removed from abusive neglectful parents, but where exactly are you wanting them to go? Especially when there are 3, 4 siblings. Are you splitting them up? Are you keeping them together? Because good luck finding foster placements that can take on multiple siblings.

The system is broken, and yes, the adoption process/criteria should be less rigid and judgemental but it's chicken and egg.