Caporegime
Bronson Battersby: Review after boy, two, and dad found dead
The deaths of Bronson Battersby and his dad Kenneth prompt a "rapid review" by Lincolnshire Council.
www.bbc.co.uk
I was reading this earlier today and it broke my heart to think about the poor little boy alone, starving to death with his dead dad in the house with him.
No doubt child services will be hauled over the coals for this but I always question what we can do to avoid things like this. We have the idea that being with biological parents is the best place for children until they are truly horrifically neglectful. Adoption is a very hard process to go through for good parents and yet we have such a low bar for leaving children with the scumbags who neglect and abuse them. This was a tragic case but the mum didn't even care enough to realise her baby was dead for well over a week. There was no support network within that family that was checking in.
Child services are already stretched and dealing with horrible cases where they must know constantly that they are trying to do the impossible and protect children from the very people who should love them the most.
I don't know why but this particular case really got to me. Perhaps because I have a couple of 9 month old boys so whenever something like this comes up it just makes me wonder how anyone can be so cruel and callous as to neglect a child so much.
How do we have a system that both tries to keep children with their ****** parents but also knows when to take them away?