Mother charged with neglect

[Knackeredboot]

This article has been posted on Facebook and has attracted a lot of angry comments about it from people saying the mother should be steriliser and that she's evil.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c864g0evz9jo

The crime was neglect of a baby that resulted in its death from a mother that had failed to notice that her baby hadn't woken in the night for her usual feeds due to the mothers level of intoxication.

There's no indication that the baby would usually have to be woken for feeds, just that it was the babys usual routine.

The mother was awake but drunk. But had she been asleep then would that have been considered neglect too? She checked on the baby from a distance but did not try to stir. Again, I wouldn't go into my 5mo's room regularly in the night for a close up check on them as I would be asleep also.

It says that the level of intoxication was 2.5times the driving limit which is irrelevant as she wasnt driving.

Am i missing something here? I feel like the commenters are being incredibly hard on her based on the little detail in the article. Although I'm not a big drinker I know loads of couples that get smashed on the weekend while at home with the kids.

It boils my piss that there is no blowback on the men who walk away leaving women holding the baby and carrying the can when something goes wrong.

How do you know the father did walk away?
And even if he did and was the worse father in the world that doesn't absolve the mothers actions..

It’s not a random “something going wrong” here, is it? It’s a clear case of actual neglect on the part of the mother. She actively behaved in a way that endangered her child.
Carrying the can makes it sound as though she’s been fitted up and blamed for something she had no hand in.
It’s astounding how some bitter people can still do a ‘what about the father?’ nonsense when the father wasn’t even on the premises.

I’m not sure which is worse.

This is on her.

If social services discover that you're in sole charge of young children and getting so drunk that you are incapable of caring for them properly they absolutely will intervene. Or, at least, they did when my ex was doing that some years ago. Our DCs ended up on the Child Protection Register after my ex refused to properly engage with the alcoholism support services the social worker put in place. The social worker told me that she had several other alcohol-related cases on her list.

i agree this is neglect - everyone knows you dont put babys to sleep on the sofa for risk of suffocation. Had she done this and not been drunk she may have made more and better checks on the baby. That rigour mortis set in before she realised says a lot about the checks she did. She completely disregarded her babys wellbeing to focus on getting drunk - that is neglect of her parental responsibility. It wasnt murder - she didnt intend to kill her baby. Its not accidental death - as the death could have been prevented by better parenting. It is neglect I agree with the court.

I do also agree with other commentators that the wider context is not really considered. Mothers do appear to carry the burden of responsibility for caring for babies and being judged. The mother was neglectful so the judgement is right. The mitigations are probably her circumstances if she was the sole carer without help. Women do carry the burden of responsibility within society and the legal system is generally dominated by men. Either way she was neglectul in her responsibilities toward the baby. She has to carry the emotional burden of that for the rest of her life which is probably worse than what any judge can sentence on her

That’s only guidance. Not sleeping in same room as your newborn is not neglect.
my daughter didn’t sleep in with us for 6 months, lots of parents put their baby in another room from birth.

I think it’s impossible to judge..
Baby shouldn’t have been on the sofa as this probably increased the risk due to lack of airflow and possible overheating… but we don’t have enough information to make that judgement.
I never drank around my DD… I’m fact haven’t touched the stuff since about 4 months before I fell pregnant.. but I know of parents who do drink around their children.
I didn’t check on my DD, because just walking in her room woke her… she was horrendous… BUT I did have a mat under her mattress which alarmed if she stopped breathing…
man’s yes there have been other cases where parents have been neglectful and not charged… Madeline McCann springs to mind… not only were her parents drinking & eating, they’d left their 3 children in an unlocked apartment… their DD didn’t die from SIDS she was taken and probably murdered as a result of their neglect… and not a single charge made by our justice system…
but I do wonder in this case, whether there was more to it… however people are very quick to judge,

and not a single charge made by our justice system…

How could ‘our’ justice system charge them? The incident happened in a Portugal. We have no jurisdiction there.

I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that she had gone to sleep next to her on the sofa after she was done drinking. Not sure if it was upthread or in one of the articles quoted

I don’t condone what she did at all but there are some things to consider. Stoke is the fifth poorest area in England and the area she is from is particularly deprived. Literacy, and therefore health literacy, are also really low with the average reading age being 7 and obviously if that’s the average, many won’t reach that level.

So the Mum might not have known about sofas not being a safe place to sleep.

Oh come on stop making excuses and being patronising, safe sleeping for babies is in every baby clinic
I live in a poor deprived. Area too, people are not stupid.

Every single pregnant woman has access to maternity services. Health visitors give this information, before birth and after. She doesn’t need to be literate to understand safe sleeping guidelines, she just needs to engage with maternity services.

I’m really not making excuses for anybody but
Not everybody has access to maternity services
I didn’t have any for my first child they didn’t turn up, at all. Stayed in hospital until day three and then never saw them again until I went to the clinic three weeks later to get her weighed.

Didn’t see them again until our vaccinations

So now the moirher is not only illiterate but also lives in an area with thin on the ground maternity services ,so she can't read about safeleeping or be told about it?
Honestly some posters are tying themselves in knots ,to excuse the mother.

And some people apparently can’t read.
Given the post started with, I’m not making excuses 🙄
A catalogue of one error after another from the system combined with less than an idea or circumstances is always what leads to tragedies like these.
I’m sure lessons will be learnt 🙄🙄

Well, it started with ‘I’m not making excuses but’. The ‘but’ negates the bit that comes before! We have no idea if the mother was illiterate, or if she had poor access to maternity services. It could be that neither of those things are true.

And it could be that both are
Experience tells me that there should’ve been intervention in this case long before there was this Person/family /baby has slipped through the net

My experience tells me that some people choose not to access maternity services, and that can lead to tragedies such as this one. I don’t think anyone is denying that there should have been early intervention in this case. I’m sure she wasn’t a stellar mother before this happened.

Getting drunk when in charge of babies is completely irresponsible. I’m not talking about this case specifically but in general. I can honestly say that my children have never seen me drunk or even have a drink at home. On holiday last year I had 3 ciders but my DH was there too and my kids were 16 and 12.

My Mam was an alcoholic and I’ll never forget the awful feeling of going home from school when she was drunk every single day. I vowed never to let my kids see my drink and I’m pleased to say I’ve stood by it.

I have no time for folk who gets drunk whilst in charge of kids, especially young ones and babies.

To add, I do drink in moderation, but it would be out for a meal with friends whilst my child was with their dad or a glass of wine when they were in bed. We wouldn’t drink together, one if us would not drink incase of an emergency

And yet she retained custody residency of the other child. Funny old world isn’t it?

We have no idea about her history (or otherwise) of social services involvement with her other child. And that’s the point. The jury will have had access to far more information than we do, in the short article linked. And the jury, with all of that information at their disposal, judged her to have been guilty or neglect.

Plus, as I’m sure you’re aware, plenty of non stellar parents have residency of their children.