Compulsory sterilisation?

I ^certainly do not Deserving.

It will be the same old , same old .

Lessons have been learned, the head of the authority will get a big payoff and then "back to Business" until the next poor innocent child .

It is quite tragic !!!

No member of staff would be in anyway in trouble for reporting a genuine concern of abuse to the CP officer in a school (usually HT).

If the mother had given a plausible 'story' to the HT about a medical condition/eating disorder to try to explain away the child's scavenging and weight loss then I can see why HT might have been hesitant to report on to SS, though along with physical injuries, it does seem odd that they were not pressing for further investigation/information at least. I also think the child's emotional state would have been causing alarm. As a HT I would have written to GP telling him/her what I had been told by parent and ask the GP to refer to SS if medical condition was untrue. I have done that when I was not convinced the story a parent was giving me re keeping a child off school was true. Doc could not disclose any info to me but could make a forward referral.

Sadly school nurses/medicals do not happen any more..they were a good way of getting better communication between health, SS and schools.

It is not an excuse but all services:schools, SS and health are so overwhelmed with centrally issued targets, reports, accountability data and budget cuts etc that this sometimes takes attention away from the things that really matter: the people they are serving.

The two killers deserve their punishment.

I am also in total disbelief that this could happen in our so called civilised society. I agree with everything Iam64 has said about the state of child protection services but in this case I don't think they were the ones at fault. (I stand to be corrected when the serious case review has reported). As well as disbelief at the failings of the teachers, I am at a loss to understand why a community paediatrician who saw this poor child with severe weight loss did not immediately admit him to hospital for further investigations. I am confident that this would happen in my own authority for all it's weaknesses. It is very worrying that an authority like Coventry, hardly a backwater, seems to have no coherent child protection policy and staff who appear unable to grasp the basics.

I agree with what you say deserving. In this country the teachers and others are liable if they don't report suspected abuse.

The other thing is, what is wrong with other people, such as parents stepping in. When living in the UK I saw a vicar riding alongside a distressed ten year old who was running. I bolted after them and stopped this stupid man. I phoned the school and spoke to the head, she said she had asked him to bring this naughty boy back to the school. I told her how angry I was to see the boy in this situation, she then said she realised it was the wrong thing to do. I found out later the boy had severe asthma and even though he didnt stop running he told his mother it helped him to see someone stop the vicar chasing him.

It's not the only time I have had to intervene, I felt threatened once by a bus driver who I told to let a teenage girl off the bus. She had caught the wrong bus which didn't stop until miles further on and he was going to make her stay on the bus for the forty minute trip.

My daughter used to pack extra lunch for my GD's class mate who had a neglectful parent.

Life imprisonment for them both, with a minimum of 30 years to be served, and not a moment too long!

What can you say? Nobody wants to be involved and the fact that a family is foreign seems to give them the excuse not to inquire too deeply and to overlook missed appointments because "They are not used to our ways"
Months will be spent on the review, millions of words will be written and not a thing will change. In a year or two the next tragedy will come to light and the authorities will be "learning lessons" all over again. We were told that everything would change after the Maria Colwell case in 1973 and we are still waiting.

Not me!

Mandatory reporting, sounds ok, and is, until you hear that some teachers are not more than children themselves. They are more frightened of making a mistake, and themselves suffering consequences, than fearing for the life of a child.
As for staff in the prisons, they are more at the mercy of the prisoners than you think, and have to be very careful what the say to a prisoner, and even more careful of what they do, or do not do.Their fellow prisoners would only be similar people to themselves,if there are any, they will be segregated for their own safety, and be in relative luxury compared to the "poor little boy". We will again hear of measures designed to ensure that this sort of thing will never happen again.I say," it will, repeatedly". How many wish to disagree with me , on this occasion?

gracesmum not everyone on GN is a parent - I'm not, but that doesn't stop me from feeling the same revulsion you do. My heart breaks when I think of that poor child, not having someone to turn to who could have stopped this from happening.

Mandatory Reporting sorry the link didn't work.

That seems to be the problem, the head has the responsibility to report the abuse. In Australia there is Mandatory Reporting where those professionals including teachers are legally required to report suspected abuse to a Child Protection Helpline.

I can't understand when a child is stealing food and is very thin why it was left to the head teacher to decide. Also I have read that the boy had been diagnosed as Autistic. It seems to me that this is the era of children being diagnosed as "Autistic" previously children were diagnosed as being "Hyperactive."

Poor little mite, left to starve and be beaten, it breaks my heart to think no one cared enough to make sure he was okay.

Allegedly this poor child had various hospital visits. Had one of my patients presented with the broken arm (? arms) being immaciated, etc etc. I would certainly have reported this as a ? NAI (Non Accidental Injury)
As everybody says, it really begs belief that Daniel had to sustain this continual abuse.

What amazed me was that the abuser is always a very plausible and accomplished liar. I have done skeletal surveys for ?NAI (I was a radiographer) on babies and small children whose parents are seemably out of their minds with concern for the child, but obviously they are really more concerned about being found out.

After their 30 year sentences, I suggest these 2 are returned to their homeland, but I doubt it will ever happen.

When I reported that a girl had told me she was being abused by her father and uncle, the headteacher of the Catholic High School refused to believe that a 'good Catholic father' would do such a thing. This was in 1974. I think he was concerned for his own career. Nothing seems to have changed.

The safeguarding officer at the school should not have ignored the reports from the teachers - the whole safeguarding system in schools is just window dressing otherwise.

Local authorities (I know mine is one) have withdrawn funding from preventive work with children families (as it is not a statutory requirement) and concentrated on crisis management (which is). A false ecomony with fatal consequences.

This poor poor child - I cannot bear to think about it. I have two similar aged gradsons and the thought of anyone subjecting them to such cruelty makes me feel ill.

Awful, awful, awful. Poor little boy

I seem to have lost a line; it should have read "I cannot bring myself to read the newspaper reports and rushed to switch off the radio when today's You and Yours.." etc

I think that when we are in contact - albeit at a distance via the media- with real evil, strong emotions are aroused and expressed. We are all parents, most os also grandparents and cannot imagine this poor child's miserable existence without genuine even physical revulsion. Many reactions are correspndingly intemperate. I feel I am "wimping out" - I cannot bring today's You & Yours went into details. Head in the sand? I hope not, I DO care and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to know this sort of thing cold never happen again.Alas, I fear it can and will - there are monsters in this world.

I also find one or two of the posts on this thread scary.

Life with a minimum term of 30 years...

@Petra : You scare me. You would glory in the pain of others - that's as bad as the couple we are discussing.

Petra the parents are obviously disturbed and wicked individuals and have just received life sentences - for me personally that's them dealt with.

I think our energies should be spent on both apportioning some professional blame here and really aiming to try and prevent other cases of such blatant neglect and cruelty going unchallenged. The boy was emaciated, had black eyes, and bruises on the neck - words really fail me as to why this didn't raise alarm bells.

I'm going to be ageist and say that 32 years of age is far too young to be a headteacher, FGS!

I fully understand that older heads can also be lax but surely someone with a bit more experience would have handled things differently, only because they'd be a bit more cynical for a start. There must have been a dearth of candidates for the job.

Riverwalk, I didn't hear that, but agree - one of the first things I did when I qualified was to read the report into the death of Jasmine Beckford. I've read all the reports into child deaths since then, and the way in which we repeat history is so depressing. The key issues seem always to be isolation, lies, manipulation, professionals who believe what lying parents tell them. Children have never been seen on their own and given the opportunity to talk about their experiences.
By the time I retired, 3 years ago, I spent 75 - 80% of my time on a computer. All the admin support who previously typed our letters and reports, completed our various forms after we gave them a copy of our written information etc - all made redundant. I had to enter the details of families with say 7 children, 5 fathers, several different ethnic backgrounds, faiths and languages onto 4 different forms, on the internet. My skills are in working with families..... We were also increasingly working with families from different cultures, most of whom told us it was normal in their culture (whatever "it" happened to be). One colleague was told by a Polish father that we English over reacted to normal Polish drinking habits, or use of sticks to chastise children. (Please, I'm not anti Polish, I could give so many examples.)
So, the social work professor is spot on, we need professionals freed up, properly trained and supported to work with challenging and even dangerous families. It's my understanding that we have a shortage of paediatricians. Just as we have a shortage of children and families social workers, because those two professionals are always pilloried when parents kill their children. I am absolutely not defending sloppy, careless practice - but as others have said, school staff, medical staff, police all trying to communicate with a mother who I suspect has a personality disorder, who is a plausible, manipulative liar, with no empathy whatsoever for her child. Truly shocking. Her boy friend sounds like a psychopath.

I know that there are a lot of people on here who will disagree with what I am going to say, but I've said it before ( on here ) and I will say it again.

If I had endless money I would pay to have these people really hurt, and I mean really.
If any of you have read the book, The Feather Men you will know how far this can go.

Iam64 yesterday morning on The Today programme a professor of social work was interviewed. He explained that, words to the effect, a Serious Case Review would be carried out and that this would be a bad thing because all that would happen would be that schools, social workers, police, etc would tighten-up procedures i.e. ensure the paperwork stands up to scrutiny, meaning even more time spent on administering the system and less out in the field protecting the children.

Like everyone else I'm so distressed at the thought of this sad lonely little lad being totally at the mercy of his tormentors with no-one to turn to.

Surely someone who came into contact with him professionally should be held to account.

Notso - I don't know if these parents are psychopathic. But, I suspect that Hindley and Brady would have welcomed hearing the screams of little Lesley Ann Downey They taped her and photographed her, so they could re-live what they did to her. There will probably be psychiatric evaluation of these two - who knows, what we do know is they set out to harm this little boy and it went so far he died. They put his body in the same bed as his sibling, who told the court he listened for, but there was no heart beat. The reason he was sharing his bed with his dead brother was in the aim of avoiding paramedics finding the cell with the urine soaked mattress that this little chap lived in. It is just too horrible isn't it

Notso - I don't know if these parents are psychopathic. But, I suspect that Hindley and Brady would have welcomed hearing the screams of little Lesley Ann Downey They taped her and photographed her, so they could re-live what they did to her. There will probably be psychiatric evaluation of these two - who knows, what we do know is they set out to harm this little boy and it went so far he died. They put his body in the same bed as his sibling, who told the court he listened for, but there was no heart beat. The reason he was sharing his bed with his dead brother was in the aim of avoiding paramedics finding the cell with the urine soaked mattress that this little chap lived in. It is just too horrible isn't it