How were those six children, one of which is now dead, left to starve?

[AB Asks]

The scene was horrific, six emaciated children lying on a mattress in a disgusting room - this is what greeted paramedics. The children who lived in Birmingham were removed from school and had not been seen for over a month. Social workers had visited their home once and had not followed up their visit. Khrya, 7, was one of the starving children found, she died later in hospital. There has been an outrage as to how this can have gone unnoticed. Birmingham City Council was unable to comment as the matter is now subject to a police investigation. What do you think? Have no lessons been learnt from the death of Victoria Climbie who died from abuse from her aunt and her partner in 2000?

[Gromit]

I blame the parents.

[vehelpfulguy]

My wife works with children with "special needs" and often has to visit people's homes.

And she tells me that there are many examples of familes where there are perhaps mental health problems with a parent or parents that case all sorts of issues.

While it is easy to "blame the parents" many parents cannot cope for one reason or another - maybe due to their own mental health problems or disabilities, or maybe due to issues like drink or drugs.

We may like to think we are an intelligent, articulate, caring society, but I am afraid there are thousands of families living like the one being discussed in this situation.

[R1Geezer]

as usual it's the useless social bleeding services, passing the buck to each other and generally p0ncing about rather than doing an effective job. Time and again they are warned of at risk children and do nothing, this is the latest example I'm afraid.

[stokemaveric]

vhg sadly you are correct,its only when a story like this crops up that it is brought to light.is it neglect you may ask,is it a mental health issue on the behalf of the parents?where were the immedeate family they must have noticed something strange about the kids,where were the friends of this couple,neighbours,social services?there are a lot of people who COULD have stepped in to save these kids they must ALL surely have a heavy weight on their hearts...

[B00]

I'ts never as easy as that though Stoke...

were the social services involved with this family?

There's another thread further down about this case, and I've said on there that if I myself didn't see my neighbours children for a few weeks, I wouldn't naturally assume they were being starved to death within the house. It's all very well for us to be do-gooders AFTER the event by saying "well if i'd lived next door to them....."

I really dont think we can blame anyone other than the childrens mother and her partner- whatever was going on in their lives and in their heads, time will tell.

[andy-hughes]

I think vehelpfulguy has perfectly isolated the issues here.

It is far to easy to throw up our hands in horror at the 'wicked' parents, but no parent can make a concious decision to maltreat their children to this dgree - unless there is an element of mental disfunction at work.

Sadly, there are large numbers of people who have little or no direct control over their lives. Things 'happen' to them, and they go along with situations without thought or action.

It is so tragic that these people are allowed to live like this, or in this poor little mite's case, to die like this.

It is far too easy to point eh finger at Socail Services, when anyone who knows anything about their situation knows that they are under-resourced in both personel and budgets.

Still, you can't fight foreign wars on two fronts and have a decent society can you? We just need to adjust our priorities and this kind of tragedy could disappear overnight.

But it won't happen.

That is the real tragedy - not just that this has happened, but that it has happened before, and it will happen again.

[brionon]

I think the children were not going to school this should have been a warning sign surely? And the girl who died was ''Stealing'' bread from the neighbour's bird table.
What more was needed?

[helpmetoo]

this is what happens when the parents are peasants and thick or mad,

there should of course be a licence to breed,

[funnygirl]

I am shocked at this too!!

Obviously there was a breakdown in communications along the way.

It also seems, that is it so easy to fool the Social Workers
who call on these families. Cannot they see the tell tale signs of abuse?
Why do they let the parents/carers fob them off with excuses?

[youngmafbog]

Yeah but its there human rights init.

Cant' let the social in it might make them feel bad.

[Androcles]

"Gosh, next door's children are taking bread from our bird table and eating it.!....They do look a bit thin and that's the first time we have seen them for weeks......None of our business............... it's down to their mum and dad - we don't want to argue with them.!

I'd like to think I'd handle it differently, but faced with it?

[lynbrown]

I too like vehelpful guy have relations who work with young children and their families. There are lots of hungry kids in this country - their free school dinners keep them going but they often dont eat over the weekend. Of course, its all down to the parents who are either alcoholics and /or junkies. They are known to the authorities but are left with the parents. I often wonder if some social workers come from very poor backgrounds themselves and empathise with these parents, giving them every chance, regardless of how useless they are.