Have just contacted the NSPCC

[Paula71]

I was going to write here before I did it but I have just emailed the NSPCC about a neighbours child. I am feeling a bit shell-shocked as now it is done I hope I am not "exposed" as the mother concerned will retaliate.
Briefly, a little girl who lives across the road from me with her drug dealing parents runs about all day unsupervised, in the road, and she is only about three. There is a bad history with this family, namely this little girl fed her baby sister drugs a few months ago, both were taken into care and months later, returned to the parents (who have another 5 children not living with them.) Recently she has taken to stripping off her knickers and making gestures no child that age should know about. The other local kids are completely bewildered and since the first incidence of that happening no one has been out to play.
She is often seen standing on her window ledge buck naked.
I know other neighbours have called Crimestoppers about the drugs but I am more concerned with her. The other parents here avoid her and I don't want her coming anywhere near my toddlers. It is a damn shame too as none of this is her fault but I couldn't take her mother coming over and picking a fight like she has with other neighbours.
I am now feeling like a right old sticky beak neighbour, social services were involved after the drug incident but the parents immediately behave differently when a visit is in the offing.
Have I done the right thing?
I just hope to God I have not put my own children in danger over this but I just couldn't bare to see such neglect anymore.

well done you.You have done the right thing.I was in a situation a few year ago when i suspected a neigbour of leaving her baby home alone while she went shopping/school runs and things.I still see her from time to time because I have moved she now has another toddler and a baby on the way again they are dirty crawling alive with nits e.t.c and I wished reading your post that I had been brave enough to do it .Didn't think about the n.n.s.p.c I didn't trust the social services as such.She walks along with a bottle of gin under her pushchair as well and has been caught supping it in the school playground.I did put her in touch with a family center run by social services which I think she still attends so at least I done that.Anyway what I am trying to say is that after reading your story if anything like that ever happens again then I will call them too.

Absolutely the right thing to do Paula. The parents need to be made aware (if they aren't already) that their parenting is inadequate. And, as Lara2 says, their right to be parents should be removed if they are not up to the job. How can it be better for a child to be brought up in that kind of situation than for an alternative family to be found? Having said that, I feel very sorry for their older children who presumably are in "care". Often that means in a children's home or, at best, in foster care.

Thank you all so much for the support. It is nice to know I am not a nosey=parker!

So far nothing has happened. NSPCC have passed details onto Social Services (not initialled SS for nothing y'know.) Because the parents are drug-dealers they will probably be able to keep the children as this sort of thing seems to happen.

In my opinion drugs are a selfish act which means the people involved should not be allowed to keep their children as their care will not be foremost in the parents' mind. But SS see it as good therapy for the children to stay with the parents. It just wastes the child's life.

Since I contact the NSPCC I noticed the neighbourhood kids are avoiding the little girl because of her aggressiveness. They call her "squinty". It is heart-breaking.

To be honest though, which parent would be happy to let their kids play in a house of a drug-dealer? The children will always suffer.