Another poor child killed at the hands of his parent and lover

If we can't have them hung, drawn and quartered then a full life sentence will have to do. If they can't be jailed until death then I would say until they are 70 years old, no matter what age they are when they get locked up. By 70 years old their vital years will be over and they can hobble off and spend their energy dealing with their arthritis and bowl problems.

night owl, thanks for recognising my feelings. Often, the response to these horrific murders, is to put blame with social workers, that happens even when children’s services haven’t been involved. Rarely if ever, does anyone acknowledge to toll on social workers of spending their working lives trying to safeguard and support the most vulnerable children in our country.

Iam
Difficult work and few rewards. And a lifetime of memories, some good, many bad, some haunting. The reality of some children’s lives is unimaginable.

Most people realise the difficult job social workers have, but when you read of so many missed opportunities to spot the child was in trouble it doesn't seem like there's any excuse. In many cases they admit there were catastrophic failures and warning signs were ignored.

It’s true about the missed opportunities. We hear about reports not followed up or injuries disguised but the blame for these appalling happenings rests absolutely on the perpetrators.

Social workers do spot the signs and do not ignore warning signals, but they have attempt to work with the families while trying to find a place of safety for these children, and there are few available.
The focus needs to be on the sadists who commit these crimes, but attempt moving a child from a parent you know to be inadequate with a dangerous partner is very very hard.
Unless you have worked with these people it is hard to realise just how cunning and manipulative they are, and how utterly devoid of conscience.

The media tend to portray child protective workers as unfeeling ,cold, bureaucratic people trying to separate children from their natural families. That is the problem. The children are usually too scared to tell the truth.

The only thing about social workers that surprises me, is that anyone wants to become one. They're hugely under funded, they're understaffed because they're under funded, if they remove a child because they believe a child is at risk, they're accused of breaking families up and if they leave a child with a family and try to put support in place and it fails, they're accused of endangering that child with their negligence.
During the pandemic lockdown, social workers struggled to maintain contact with families on their books: no schools open to spot any obvious signs of neglect or abuse. No social worker home visits allowed. No extended families, friends or neighbours were allowed to visit, so no reporting to social services. Many thousands of families were already struggling before the pandemic hit and social workers had impossible to manage case loads.

But none of that applied for Sebastian because he was never on any radar as a child at risk; his death wasn't because of a "negligent, over worked social worker"; his death was because of a cruel, sadistic, monster of a mother and her equally monstrous lover. MollyGo is right; they are the only perpetrators.

Well said Chewbacca. I worked closely with social workers and they do indeed have a thankless job, and everything you say about funding and stress of the job is true.

Where things go wrong it is usually down to the system and it scapegoating of individuals does not help towards future change and improvement.

I defy anyone who is critical of social workers to walk a week in their shoes. I can guarantee there will be sleepless nights.

Chewbacca, fewer people do want to become social workers and retaining staff is a challenge. 12 years ago, the 4 students on our team were 19, in the 2nd year of a 3 year sw degree, they were so young and lacking in life experience. I trained at 30, I’d worked in a variety of places, engineering / building works. done 2 years in an unqualified role with the Probation services, working with recidivist offenders.
Students did a 2 year course, had to be 25 years old, with two A levels. If you’d done a relevant degree, you could do a 1 year course from age 22. Our teams were made up of enthusiastic young graduates and people who’d trained as mature students, we had ex military, retired police, former admin staff, hair dressers, yiu name it. we were sponsored by local authorities or by the Home Office if yiu were going into probation, with a small salary. Students now run up £60/70,000 debt to train.

It needs an overhaul.

BlueBelle

I believe we need to know what’s happening to these children we need to hurt, we need to cry, because we need to do something about it I don’t know what but something has got to happen these vile people have got to face more punishment than languishing in a well kept prison

We need to prevent more children being mistreated and killed by unfit parents rather than discuss the appropriate level of punishment of the guilty parties.

To have any hope of doing so, we need to try and work out why these horrible crimes are being committed, and ensure that teachers, doctors, and anyone else who work with children can recognise the early signs of abuse and act on them.

The thing that concerns me is that these poor murdered children are the very tip of the iceberg.

They are what's visible.

Then there are all those mistreated in childhood with lifelong depression, anxiety, addiction issues, personality disorders and the many who suicide.

I've had extensive safeguarding training and I'm passionate about protecting children from abuse having come from an abusive background.

You would be amazed how many don't take me seriously, tell me my experience makes me too biased to discuss it and don't even agree with what constitutes abuse let alone how serious a problem it is in society.

So many disregard their own children's needs and feelings and are so quick to forget how easy it is negatively impact a person just because you think you know better or you don't agree they should feel the way they do.

Children are intelligent, perceptive, individual and worthy of respect.

We have to start teaching society that.

How right you are VioletSky

fewer people do want to become social workers and retaining staff is a challenge.

I'm not in the least bit surprised Iam64. My, now retired, social worker friend was asked to work under Children & Family Services but she only managed to cope for a few months, before moving to Elderly Care Services. Burn out, unimaginable pressure, depression, unmanageable case loads and public vilification if you make a mistake...... why would anyone subject themselves to that. You're right; it does need overhauling.

Our students had been advised by Tutors to choose any area of social work but to avoid child protection at all costs. The fear of a child death, the horrors thst involves for everyone involved seemed to be eclipsed but the terror if being photographed on the front page of the daily you know what

OMG we have another child death, a newborn this time. The mother not sent to jail because she was suffering post-natal depression.
Baby Lili-Mai shaken to death

I can't bear to look, sorry

I think you might be right Antonia. Relations were always down the street or around the corner, families helped each other not compete which quite a lot do now.
People accepted that if their child was caught being naughty someone would tell them or give them a smack.
I worked in a place where one of the workers turned out to be a paedophile. It was horrible we all had to have interviews and talk to a psychologist. Some felt guilty as they had always had doubts. Others like myself were new and perfectly ignorant of what had been going on.
The accused was found guilty and sent to prison. They soon had to be moved to solitary confinement because of the way they were treated by other inmates. They are considered the lowest of the low by them.
I often wonder if they are now out and living somewhere under an alias. If so hopefully not near children.

The murder of Lily-Mai sickened me when I read the details before the guilty finding. I haven’t read the link. It was clear from earlier reading, this baby should never have been allowed home. The hospital staff raised significant red flag concerns about absence of bonding. My initial conclusion was sw managers over rode the multi disciplinary and sw assessment.
I could scream but - were they trying to avoid expensive care proceedings and negative assessment they’d ‘too many’ children in care? Or were they stupid

I'm avoiding looking at the news; I just don't feel that I can absorb any more. Sickened is the right word Iam64.

I read the report by Louis Blom- Cooper onto the death of Jasmine Beckford in 1984. It triggered an over haul of child protection services. His ultimatum ‘ thou shalt not not I intervene’. It stressed the client was the child, not the parent. By 1988, Butler Sloss concluded in the Cleveland report r=there was ‘no reason to doubt the medical evidence that led professionals to believe children had been sexually abused. The criticism despite this,was of those who intervened. By the mid 90’s, policy drifted from child protection towards family protection.
Moving on to the death of baby p, professor Eileen Munro reviewed services in 2011. Her report warned the systems ability to be child centre was compromised. Michael Gove said the state was failing children. Putting ‘the rights of biological parents ahead of vulnerable children’.
I used Bea Campbell’s article in the Guardian 17.03.13 to check out my memory of the way child protection swin between the needs of children and the rights of parents
The body of knowledge is solid. It needs well trained, qualified, experienced workers. They need clinical supervision, to work in stable multi disciplinary teams, or with good working relationships between the agencies involved.
Austerity has not helped.

When I trained I did a social science degree, then a postgraduate diploma in social work. My degree was financed by the local authority - no debt - and the postgrad course by the Home Office - no debt. I then had a trainee social worker post where I was supported and helped to find my feet.

However, I do think that I was too young - no real life experience, and I did my O and A levels a year early, so started my university career younger than most.

Iam makes a good point about the maturity of social workers - I know that I did not feel ready to take up my career - no real life experience.

But unfortunately social workers often do not stay - those people with the valuable experience get burned out because of short staffing and lack of support - these are the people we need. I left at the age of 50 - I was working with people with brain injuries at that point and there were no funds to help them - we just assessed them to death and offered little. My colleagues still working in Children's Services were equally frustrated.

Social workers are damned if they do and damned if they don't; they are hedged around by departmental policies and financial constraints; they cannot offer the sort of constructive preventative help that they can see is desperately needed because the tory government pulled the plug on the funding.

There will sadly always be people like these dreadful parents/step-parents, but we will not prevent these deaths unless the government grasps the meaning of the word preventative - they think short term.

I could only read a little about this terrible case as the details were heart breaking. How I wish this lovely young boy could have managed to tell someone, anyone no matter who, that he was being so ill treated. The fact that the family were “trapped” in their home together because of the Covid lockdown is absolutely no excuse for either of these monsters to behave how they did. Not that it would have been excusable but they were not having to deal with a screaming baby or demanding toddlers this was a 15 year old boy and what they did was systematic torture. Prison is too good for them and why should we pay for them to be looked after. I would normally never support the death penalty but in this case and in all other cases like this it is the only suitable sentence. They do not deserve to live and if there is an afterlife let’s hope theirs is in hell.

In the case of Lily Mai there were very serious concerns raised by nursing staff and these were overrode by sw. This woman had been homeless, didn’t like the noises this poor baby made and was more interested in going for a burger than seeing her baby.

This is a failing on the part of a sw. Yes, they have a difficult job but, as in any other profession, some aren’t very good at their job. I know because I’ve worked closely with them. Some are excellent and some are pretty dire to be honest. In the case of vulnerable children there’s no place for mediocre sw’s.

Tickingbird, I don’t think it’s one sw at fault here. My reading is the sw was told by managers this baby should be sent home. I can’t understand the decision making process. It’s rare for hospital staff to raise such a high level of concern. I’ve read sw managers decided the baby go home, the sw made the necessary application for care proceedings to be initiated. The sw went on planned leave . The little baby had been killed before legal proceedings started.

The judge concluded infanticide, which suggests mum was mentally I’ll at the time.

It seems inevitable the inquiry will conclude an absence of multi disciplinary communication and working. There are specialist CPN working with mothers. Was there a multi disciplinary meeting to share and evaluate the assessments to date.
‘Lessons will be learned’. - no that wheel was invented to plus years ago, it doesn’t need re-inventing, it needs following