17 year old found starved to death in Birmingham

[PinkPussyCat]

Just heard about this on the lunchtime ITV news... Apparently there were several other emaciated children found at the scene following a call to the emergency services.
They don't have any more details than that atm.

How can stuff like this be happening in the UK in 2008?

Yes, exactly, I would say that most people, however they choose to educate their children, do what they think is BEST - not just 'cross their fingers' and hope the teachers will do 'as good a job'!
I think sometimes home educators forget that children spend only half the year at school, and then only from 9am to 3pm. You pack in a hell of a lot of educating in the five years before school and a hell of a lot more in the six - eight hours they are at home even on a school day. We all 'home educate' but some of us think it is best to ALSO entrust our children to professionals!

That is your choice Vivace -we sent our children to school originally too but then we didn't know anything about home education.

I do wish we had never sent them as it did huge damage to our children-however I think if I am truthful, I would have sent them in the first place, as that is the norm and I would have seen nothing wrong with it.
But then of course, I would have known about HE sooner I would have got them out earlier.
But horses for courses. You know your children best.

But is also my point about a parent being trusted to look after the best interests of their child.

And if there are welfare concerns then the state should do something about it-but each family should have the right to parent as they see fit without state interference until that point.

If my children were really suffering then of course I'd take them out of school and either move them or if I had to, do it myself. But they like it a lot and gain a huge amount from it. It is the BEST choice for them. The school experience is BETTER than I could give them on my own. Which is not to say I don't educated them. Of course I do. They read books at breakfast and look up insect structure on the internet when they come home (for example) and I am one of those hideous, pushy, poncey mothers who puts on classic FM in the car and uses it as a marvellous chance to tell them the story of Orpheus in the underworld, and to discuss the similarities and differences between 20th Century Russian and French music And I don't admit that in real life, I can tell you.
As to what happened to the poor children in the news, I don't know, and hopefully we will find out. I doubt it will have much, if anything, to do with the home educating aspect.

fiodyl, it takes a child 60 days to starve to death.

I've had enough of this thread, I've just come back from 7 hours at the hospital with my daughter and all the talk of children dying in the press this week has really gotten to me.

I just want to say, social workers aren't psychic, they don't know when a child is at risk unless someone tells them. So we hear that these kids were taken out of school ten weeks ago, school say they were perfectly healthy then. They say it's to home educate them, an ESW visited them and said they were perfectly fine. Family say they've not seen them in ages but they were perfectly fine then. A neighbour saw them stealing food and the parents complain, so called social services. Social services come in and find a child dead. What reason did they have to come in before? The professionals in their life before and their own family hadn't been concerned, so didn't call social services, when should they have come in? Any reason that you can come up with for suspicion could apply to many families in Handsworth, Sparkbrook, Sparkhill, Balsall Heath...

A child died, but from what we've been told so far the social workers did their best.

Whatabout the fact that SW got no response and didn't return?

Relatives have just been on the radio talking about the will be strong and rallyround for the kids and they are a very big family. They hadn't seen them for months.

It is disgusting that this can happen.

just seen the family on tv blaming SS.
where were the family?

I just saw a report where the father is blaming the authorities. He last saw her a year ago and she was apparently happy. I understand that parents sometimes have to live abroad/work away but he still has a responsibility to his child to ensure she is well cared for. I wonder when he last spoke to her on the phone. Within the family, who was this poor girl able to inform that she was being starved? Families have primary responsibility for the welfare of children - not authorities.

Not read all the posts about this, so could be repeating, but did anyone see the interview with the grandmother? she blames SS for it! Where the bloody hell was she? If my mum didn't see her GChildren for a few days, she'd be demanding their presence(not really, but you get my drift), but then again, she knows my kids are well loved and cared for. Those kids GM should be searching her own conscience IMO.
I know that there are awful parents of all cultures and religions, and good ones, but perhaps this story was high lighted because the mother and probably the step father were black and muslim?

That sounds wrong, but I was trying to say that the media may have caught this up because it was a black muslim family.

Seems strange that the children be taken out of school to be HE'd and then they are starved...I wonder if that was the true reason for taking them out of school, so that they wouldn't be noticed? there are some sicko's out there...

Don't think the moslem thing has anything to do with it.

It will be another "lessons will be learnt" and no one will be punished for this.

The parents are ultimately responsible but if the authorities ad worries and didn't follow them up, they are responisbile too but hey, what the hell, they never have to live with the consequemces of thier actions do they?

I would argue that collectively we are all responsible as a community. Thatcher advocated for individuals as opposed to society. She has a lot to answer for. Think about where you live. Do you know your neighbours? Would you know if they were abusing their children? The answer is probably no on both counts. It doesn't make sense that the buck stops with the authorities. Frankly, the resources are way too limited to deal with the extent of the social problems we have.

I live in a town where at least one child every year is starved to death.

I know of cases where young boys have turned to prostition in return fot food.

Ladylush, while I'm not Thatcher's biggest fan, her thinking on individuals as opposed to 'society' is actually exactly the same as your post of 10:12:32 on this thread.

It wasn't that people should only think about themselves, it was that people should take personal responsibility rather than relying on some sort of government agency to take responsibility for them. Which I happen to agree with.

She said "there is no such thing as society - only individuals". I don't see how you can have a real community with the focus on individuals. Yes, we all need to take personal responsibility - but a collective conscience is important too.

oh, context. Where's UnQuietdad when I need him?

"Too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it ... They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

There you go, that's the quote in context - saying pretty much what you said in your first other post.

Who helps foster a sense of community if not a government. Who promotes it and maintains it? A genuine question.

I would think every individual is the answer to your question - who fosters a sense of community. Everyone needs to look out for others, but the community has dissapeared everyone seems to busy to look out for others and if we do we are considered at times busybodies.

We have though a nanny goverment and a nanny goverment produces a society that will not take responsability for themselves and if the goverment keep telling us what to do and how to do it when something fgoes wrong guess who they will blame?

I can remember a letter in The Times (a few years ago now) about a man complaining about the fact his fathers dead body had been left in the flat unfound for three weeks, the son was angry the council had not done anything. Why had the son not done anything?

This story of this dc starving is very sad, why were people not looking out for her? Where were her family?

The problem is that for a community to evolve, people need to mobilise to make that community. Someone or something needs to start that process. We seem to be quite good at organising aid events such as Live Aid etc. When it comes to our neighbours it's a bit too close to home. I find that very sad.

ladylush, I completely agree.

The Educational Social Worker had been in two weeks before, didn't see anything to worry about.
The neighbour had seen her looking emaciated and stealing food, but didn't say anything about it.
Another neighbour has been watching her sitting in her bedroom window looking like she was in agony for 6 weeks.
The father hadn't seen his daughter in over a year.
The grandmother who claimed to be a close family and saw her once a month, hadn't seen her since January.
The aunt hadn't seen her since the beginning of the year and she had been "in perfect health"

Everyone either didn't bother with her or didn't tell social services what they knew. Who let her down? Not social services.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/8084972.stm

'A seven-year-old girl kept prisoner by her mother and her partner died after being starved for weeks or months, a court has heard.

Khyra Ishaq was eventually taken to hospital but died of an infection, Birmingham Crown Court was told.

Jurors heard UK doctors had rarely seen such a severe case of starvation.

"It's just as much murder... as if they had shot, stabbed, beaten or strangled Khyra to death "

Timothy Raggatt QC, prosecuting
"The actual means or process which resulted in [Khyra's death] was brought about by a series of actions that were in effect the deliberate and calculated starvation of that little girl over a period, certainly of weeks, and very possibly months."

Mr Abuhamza has admitted five counts of child cruelty while Ms Gordon denies five counts of child cruelty between December 2007 and May 17, 2008. '