British society at its worst

Boy who starved to death was too small to reach the fridge.

For our American friends, this is a brief summery of the tragedy. A high risk child of two lived with his fifty nine year old father. Social services visited twice in the holiday period, but could not enter the property. They informed the police who failed to act. In the meantime the father died of a heart attack, and the toddler starved to death. He was found hugging his father.

Neighbours were aware there were problems, but did not act. British Society is much like that.

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SunshineGirl · 36-40, F

It is an extremely sad story. But you have talked here mainly about the state actors, whose role is necessarily limited by law, funding and practicalities. To my mind the saddest part of all is that there were apparently no friends, relatives or neighbours who were close enough to be concerned.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@SunshineGirl Indeed - but no-one likes to be too "neighbourly"; and these ones might genuinely have not realised anything was wrong. So perhaps not lack of concern but fear of taking any action.

We don't know if there were any other relatives - apart from the divorced mother of course - but if there are, they might all live a long way away, and not contact each other very often.

That is probably very common, even normal. Families do disperse.

I can give my own example.

My sisters and I all live in the same village, but not in each others' homes - a point one made when I asked if she was willing to complete a supplement to a longitudinal study in which I am a subject. She wasn't, largely because as she said, we don't actually know each other's daily lives closely enough.

We are quite close socially as well as geographically, but we don't monitor each other and don't even see each other all that often.

SunshineGirl · 36-40, F

@ArishMell Yes, it's quite difficult to make the call on when to step in unless you have specific caring responsibilities for that person. Peoples' homes are like fortresses and the defences are tricky to breach when they are put up.