if this mother wasn't coping then wtf didn't she ask for help rather than paying someone 20 f****ing quid to look after her child?

[wannaBe]

so very very for this little boy. here

Awful, awful story. I personally feel she must have been pretty short sighted with regards to her son, not to notice the signs of maltreatment from this couple. It sounds to me like she just wanted anyone to take the poor wee lad off her hands.

What a horrific way to treat a baby. Just horrifying.

Maybe she didn't ask for help because she (wrongly) believed asking ss for help would result in her losing her child.
To many parents are afraid to ask for help these days.
She did talk about family wonder why they didn't step in.

Poor little boy.

This story (like all similar stories) is so horrible. I just cannot begin to think what it might have been like for that 3 year old, and the worst is reading the bit in some reports which says that a couple of days before his death, the couple took him to see his mother and his mother noticed that he was "a bit clingy" but she still allowed him to go back with the couple who then killed him. Isn't it the total vulnerability of children and their entire reliance on their carers protection which is so obviously missing from this story. Why should that be too much for a 3 year old (or any baby) to ask from their mother / father / carer.

What that couple did was wilful maltreatment. What that mother did was neglectful. She needs to bear some of the responsibility for what happened to her child

If you told SS you were going to palm your 3 yo off for weeks on end to strangers for £20 per week surely they would have to step in immediately?

The girl was a relative of the mother and very close to each other, according to the mother in the link.

I agree the mother should have asked for help if she wasn't coping. Maybe she did, but was refused? We don't know. But I don't think she just handed her baby over to strangers. She trusted them to look after him properly.

If I had to be hospitalised for any length of time I'd much rather a relative look after my dc than SS. Although I can manage to decorate a room in a day, I don't see why the mother could have not had the boy at home on an evening.

she should be prosicuted too IMO.

Poor boy. Poor mum as well. She obviously trusted them to look after him. It just sickens me how people can behave.

I agree, she should be prosecuted too.

How awfull for the boy

She did ask for help, from her family, and they refused, apparently. So it was said on the BBC News earlier.

She last saw her 3 year old child 4 Days before he died for around 20 minutes. I don't think she is a "poor mum" at all.

Poor, poor little boy .

God, poor baby.

What must he have been thinking, sent away from his mother to this pair who abused him?

Dont care how hard she had it, why would you just farm your kid out like that?

Hang on. Social services don't just take children into care because the parents ask them to, and quite rightly. If she had approached SS for help she may have received it (depending on her mental health/state of the house etc, we don't know how good/bad it was) but they would not have taken the child into care, unless it was terrible.

It is not against the law to ask family members to look after your child. However it is against the law to ask family members to look after your child for a prolonged period of time and not to inform SS of the arrangement. It's called private fostering.

It sounds like the mother was completely emotionally neglectful in that she didn't have regular contact with her son during this time, and during the contact she did have, failed to notice his injuries. However she is not at fault (unless she knew they were abusing him) or responsible for their actions. The woman was a family member. If it had been her mother who had been looking after the child would anyone be calling for her to be prosecuted? No, because most of us let our mothers look after our DCs for periods of time.

These people were cruel, sadistic abusers, but not strangers to her. As long as she didn't know what they were doing, she is not responsible for their actions.

However I would have expected her to be more interested in her son's welfare generally.

Sorry, that last sentence sounds completely mad. Of course she should have been interested in her son's welfare. I mean the fact that she was so uninterested suggests that she was neglectful at the very least.

OP is terrible. the title that is.
as others have said, ignorant aswell. ss takes ages to get into gear. and posters have said she should be prosected. for what exactly ?

Neglect.

Neglect. She saw bruises on her son and didn't have contact him for weeks on end. She passed her child over to others to "care" for him and paid them.

The mother was equally culpable in this.
She saw her child with bruises and did NOTHING about it.

Wish I hadn't read that

FFS, she gave her son to someone she'd grown up with/was related to to look after. She didn't hand him over to some stranger in the street.

As for noticing bruising, do your children never gain unexplained bruises? She noticed bruising on his ear, hardly suspicious.

Vile.

The "support worker" has reason to feel guilty.

i feel sick

She hadn't seen him for 4 days when he died and only saw him for 20 minutes when she did. She neglected him.

Yes OP's title is unpleasant but not untrue.