Little Arthur

Let’s hope schools are never closed again. Arthur may have been alive today if his school had been open. His deteriorating condition would definitely have been noted and acted on if Arthur was in school.

Well, the infant and junior school near me closed on friday due to covid numbers.

I hope it won’t be closed for long MissAdventure, there may be at risk children who attend that school, and those children need to be in school. It’s their safest place.

I suppose nowhere is safe if the "parents" are so easily able to keep abuse under wraps.
School does seem to at least provide some sort of limited sanctuary, I suppose

The Christmas holidays are coming up.

The children who were probably at risk were the ones who were known to be vulnerable but who were not sent to school during lockdown.

maddyone

Let’s hope schools are never closed again. Arthur may have been alive today if his school had been open. His deteriorating condition would definitely have been noted and acted on if Arthur was in school.

Daniel Pelka was attending school when he was being starved to death by his mother and stepfather. School staff noticed he was eating food out of the bins.
He was also covered in bruises, like Arthur.

V3ra

maddyone

Let’s hope schools are never closed again. Arthur may have been alive today if his school had been open. His deteriorating condition would definitely have been noted and acted on if Arthur was in school.

Daniel Pelka was attending school when he was being starved to death by his mother and stepfather. School staff noticed he was eating food out of the bins.
He was also covered in bruises, like Arthur.

His mother convinced school staff that he was ill and that he had to have a special diet.

Even so, warning bells should have sounded loud and clear.

He used to steal the other children's packed lunches, and eat the dried pasta meant for crafting.
One of his teachers said he looked as if he had cancer.

Yes everyone seemed to be worried about Daniel, but nobody did anything (enough) about it.
So evil flourished, and another child died.
And here we are again, with Arthur.

And so we come circle back to Social Services, who after being alerted, usually conduct a home visit. In my experience anyway, when I was teaching, I rather more often than I would have liked, had to report safeguarding concerns to our safeguarding member of staff, and who normally alerted Social Services. However the children were rarely taken into care, although some were. The prevailing ideology is that children should remain with their parents wherever possible, and this ideology needs to be robustly challenged in my view.
My own little grandson was left with an extremely neglectful mother for over a year before being removed, despite social workers visiting very regularly. I don’t want to reveal exact details, but suffice it to say, he was extremely neglected. Since my son adopted him he has flourished.

Maddyone your grandson was one of the lucky ones to find a loving parent.
A policeman I know said he wished Social Services would report abuse to them as it is a criminal offence and may have saved other lives.
Intervention is the key I think. Even if a child is taken temporarily into care while the parents are assessed to see if there is a rectifiable situation or that that they should never have the child again.

Apparently the police can remove a child immediately under their emergency powers for a period of twenty four hours.

But they'd rather threaten to arrest the grandparents and uncle instead as in this case.

There is a photo that has been widely available in the news reports about this dreadful case with Arthur(he has a blue Hoody on) reaching round his stepmother as she is cuddling the father and it looks to me as though Arthur has a bruise on his cheek in this photo. I find this heartbreaking this particular photo because he is obviously reaching round to be loved and being ignored… not sure if I can post it? I mean I know I can post it but would it be okay to post it?

Yes everyone seemed to be worried about Daniel, but nobody did anything (enough) about it.
^So evil flourished, and another child died.
And here we are again, with Arthur.^

Why?? Because, yet again, his mother was believed. She said he was on a diet but nobody bothered to get it checked. A doctors should have been called or his own dr contacted but the old chestnut regarding parental consent would probably come into it. Until children are afforded real rights and so called professionals do their jobs properly, with support, it will continue.

V3ra

Apparently the police can remove a child immediately under their emergency powers for a period of twenty four hours.

The child's uncle apparently reported his concerns to the Police, but according to the media, was threatened with arrest if he tried to go back to the boy's house. Also (again according to the media) the police worker reluctantly agreed to look at photo's of Arthur's bruises provided by the uncle and the uncle was told that he would be contacted again after consultation with the police worker's sargeant - but he heard nothing further from the Force. Apparently, a neighbour also rang the Police.

It looks like everyone did the right thing - by reporting their concerns, but none of the agencies involved did anything about them. Do they communicate with each other even?

It's all very well to demonise the social workers but it looks like those at the top have some questions to answer. Including the Police. It's pointless them having powers if they don't take these issues seriously enough to use them.

The Police not bothering to contact the uncle again with such a serious concern? Really? Appalling.

I’m waiting for the full report - my experience of the police in emergency and ongoing child protection issues has been positive. That’s whether it’s a police protection team or an officer responding to a request for support

The more questions that are raised, the better.
No blame, no demonising, just asking what went wrong so that it may be avoided in future.

Exactly Miss Adventure.
The significance of schools in safeguarding has been high lighted by the tragedy of Arthur’s death. I read today 100,000 children have dropped out of school during the pandemic. Some will be involved in county lines.
I know some loving parents choose to home school. Some parents/careers choose to home school to prevent the outside world knowing what’s happening in their lives.

The number of 100,000 is truly astounding Iam64 and I think I’d like to see these children rigorously followed up to find out what is actually going on.

The Police not bothering to contact the uncle again with such a serious concern? Really? Appalling.
Hughes told the police that his brother(s) was/were harassing him.
Allegedly.

Some parents/careers choose to home school to prevent the outside world knowing what’s happening in their lives.
Like the 'home-schooled' 8 year old child starved to death by his parents 5 years ago in Wales. Nothing seems to have changed. No GP, no-one in authority had seen him since he was a baby.
Like Khyra Ishaq in 2010 11 years ago. And others

If children are to be home-schooled then there needs to be more rigorous inspection, not just by experts in education.

I haven't seen the video but I did see on a news report the stepmother sounding very plausible, talking about little Arthur.

How are we supposed to recognise signs of abuse?
Is there a guidebook?

Even the best social services find it hard. Years ago a social worker friend told me how she had to park her car several streets away and try not to look like she was from the council as the house she was visiting, alone, was in a very rough area.
She had to be strong and persistent to get over the threshold .

Social workers are trained to look out for signs of manipulative parents.
Perhaps not dismissing other relatives concerns might be a start.

Having got over the initial shock and horror there are three things I'd like to say that I don't think have already been said here.

1) There should be some restriction on how much detail radio and TV news can go into without warning. Suddenly hearing his poor little voice crying on the radio without warning, over and over again is traumatising and could lead people to have mental health problems. It certainly made me turn off in a hurry after the first time. They should warn before broadcasting so much upsetting detail.

2) This cruel couple had no worries at all about leaving evidence left right and centre. Cameras recording in the rooms, WhatsApp messages clearly instructing the child's killing... Seriously, what did they think would happen after his death? Did they think it wouldn't be investigated?

3) We hear of how the stepmother is now suffering a certain amount of retribution from the other prisoners. What about the father? Isn't he getting the same amount of blame?