Criminal inquiry launched after six-year-old boy ‘kills newborn baby’ in France

[SerendipityJane]

Terrible story, raises some upsetting questions.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/crime/france-baby-killed-boy-hospital-lille-b2790118.html

This situation would not have resulted in emergency temporary care.

That's what would happen here in New Zealand I'm pretty sure. Patients do not look after dependants, and children need supervision from a carer.

What a shocking and heartbreaking thing to happen. IMO responsibility lies totally with the parents. It’s clear that the staff raised concerns with the mother. It’s not the job of hospital staff to supervise a kid who was clearly dropped off at 7am to spend the day at the hospital. Imagine if some other patient, perhaps a sick baby, was left unattended because a member of staff was running around trying to supervise some random kid.

I hope those with parental responsibility for this feral kid are held accountable. Just heartbreaking for the parents of the victim.

Doesn't sound like he intentionally dropped the baby though. He sounded very neglected. Even a usually well adjusted child could get into trouble if left to their own devices everyday from 7.00am. What was the dad thinking? He should have taken the boy to his work if he couldn't get time off, rather than just dumping him.

Think it would have Hospital social worker would arrange it. Probably just for daytime, so not full foster situation.

I think even the best 6 years olds would have trouble behaving if they were left to there own devices in a hospital all day. That's why we supervise them. Sounds like this had being going on for days. Kid was probably bored stiff.

Hes 6 so clearly not criminally responsible.
This is parental neglect

The French system tends to rely much more than the UK NHS on dependents providing support for family who are admitted to hospital...

I think the working assumption (obviously incorrect) would have been initially that if the husband couldn't provide daytime care it would be up to granny or extended family to sort something out.

Social services here have different expectations to the UK.

Think not.

He’s 6. Regardless of his behaviour, and why it was happening, we recognise as a society that a 6 year old is not capable to being responsible for their actions in any criminal sense (and that goes for France too). This is entirely the fault of the adults around him. And this is combined responsibility. His parents were letting him down, the hospital processes clearly weren’t safeguarding the baby (and given the incident the day before they had real cause to be stepping that up), if he did have any sort of additional need there appears to have been no additional measures put in to support him in this period, and the result is a tragedy. And he now has to live with this forever so his own life is ruined.

I remember a long while ago when my friend was on rotation at a maternity hospital she said fathers would turn up with their other (not newborn) children in the morning and leave them with the mother to mind during the day. The family’s were from abroad and would have no family support although I’m not sure that was the only reason the fathers thought this was an okay to do, I’d suspect a heavy dose of entitlement and misogyny in there too because obviously it was far from universal.

The hospital staff could do little or nothing about it. The other children would be on the ward all day long.

As a NICU nurse, there is an enormous amount of responsibility on the staff. I won't go as far as to say they "didn't give a shit" but their actions were clearly ineffective.

• if dad/someone is dropping off the child every day at 7am, by day 2 (day 3 max) they should have known not to let him/them onto the ward if they were planning on "dropping the child off"

• asking a mum (newly postpartum) to control her 6 year old isn't going to work. You tell her this isn't possible to continue, and she either phones someone to come and collect the 6 year old, or you will have no choice but to call social services to have child placed into temporary foster care until she is discharged. And follow through. And consider a safeguarding referral for the sheer fact that if they have considered dropping a 6 year old to a hospital for supervision acceptable, they is highly likely a bigger picture at home to be considered.

• why was a premature baby in a situation where someone was able to access them without anyone noticing? If baby is in a neonatal unit ratios will be low, so how did nobody realise? Why are the wards not secured with buzzer entry systems and door release buttons to stop children wandering around the hospital? I've never worked in a trust where maternity/neonatal wards didn't have heightened security as standard, even staff swipe cards won't open the maternity/NICU doors unless they have been granted access by the ward manager/matron as someone who has just cause to ehter those areas, to limit access.

I just can't fathom how nobody put their foot down. I can't imagine any NHS unit I've worked in allowing this to happen. I appreciate they probably feel awful but frankly, as a nurse, I would hand in my resignation if this had happened on my watch. They absolutely should feel awful.

Edit to add: I appreciate I am making assumptions about french social care arrangements etc and it's possible the criteria are different, but my point that the nurses have failed in their duty to protect their patient stands

All of this.

No way that would happen when I was a nurse. One of us would have marched the kid back to the parents and insisted he was taken home. And no prem baby in a special unit would be left alone.

I thought this too. I think most six year olds would know to be careful around a tiny baby, which suggests some issues with his behaviour. They will need to be very, very careful.

Putting aside the issue of whether the blame falls mainly/partly/fully on the 6 year old’s parents or the staff, this situation should have been addressed firmly on the day they first noticed an unaccompanied child running in the corridors.

I’ve worked for decades in the NHS, mainly in mental health but also familiar with general acute and maternity units.
6 is a young, small child. I can’t really imagine any setting (park, shopping centre, anywhere - not just a medical setting) where if I saw such a young child alone I wouldn’t at least have a glance round to check that an adult was overseeing.
as a pp said in a hospital there were multiple ways this child could have injured themselves. That in itself is a major safeguarding fail.

In some ways it’s irrelevant whether children’s social care works differently in France. I don’t believe that France is massively different to the UK in that it would be routinely acceptable to have very young children running amok or unsupervised in this type of setting.

Absolutely I agree that the clinical staff have their own work/duties to attend to and of course would not become unpaid childminders for the child. However if I go to work tomorrow and find a child running round the reception area and upstairs around the ward area I wouldn’t ignore it thinking that’s on the parents. I’d be asking a colleague to come with me so we could speak with the child and if necessary (to prevent danger) would take them by the hand. As we are in the UK we would contact EDT and make the police aware if we couldn’t locate a responsible adult.

Ultimately the ‘fault’ is with whoever dropped this small boy off at 7am with disregard for his safety. This plus the apparent ambivalence of staff after this led to this tragic and catastrophic situation.

This is one of the worst things I have read in a while. That poor mother, and her poor, precious baby.

I feel for whoever found the baby on the floor too. They must be traumatised.

Any mother due to give birth in that hospital must be horrified at the thought.

The fault is on all sides here, except the poor mother who isn’t taking her baby home.
Dad or whoever dropped the 6 year old off at the hospital every day to be cared for by a woman still under hospital care and with a newborn.
The mother for allowing the child to be dropped off at the hospital, the mother for allowing a 6 year old to roam about the hospital.
The ward staff for allowing the 6 year old to be there every day with no capable parent or carer abs the hospital for having the other mother leave her baby to sort out the discharge.

When I was in hospital there was security. After a day or two why didn’t they stop the dad at the door?

@Hodgemollar assuming the mother was allowing it. She might be bed bound post cesarean, she might have a wanker husband who would have ignored her wishes. Perhaps hospital staff should have stepped in there, too.

Both children were massively failed. No child should be allowed to run unsupervised around a hospital. Why were the parents not told to remove him? Why did his father get away with leaving him there day after day when his mother was likely in no fit state to look after him?

Terrible for the parents of that poor little baby, this was an entirely preventable tragedy. The little boy left to run wild as well, when he is old enough to realise what he did, that will be awful too.

Well she did allow him to wander around on his own because ultimately she was the adult caring for him at the time.
She doesn’t get a free pass.
If she was unable to care for her child she had days to put alternative care in place and she chose not to.

I have already stated the hospital is also at fault. The child should not have been allowed on the ward without an adult to care for him other than a woman who was a patient.

I’m not disagreeing with you. What I was trying to say (badly, probably), is that the hospital may have needed to intervene on her behalf too. She could’ve been on lots of painkillers if post c section. I would have been in no fit state to even ask for help after mine.

I very much doubt that the mother was incapacitated. French news articles say that right after the incident she took the 6yo in her room and closed the door. So she could have actually done it all this time but just chose not to

Also in my experience with a c-section in France they want to get you moving around asap. Yes, there are pain killers but nothing that would impede mobility. I was less “out of it” after my French c-section than my UK vaginal birth.

Fair enough then. I’m just recalling my own experience where I was off the planet with drugs/exhaustion/hormones for a few days. I still think the parent dropping off was a arsehole to leave her in that position and the hospital should’ve intervened as part of their duty of care to her as a patient, but I take your point.