A two-year-old boy was dead, his mother charged with his murder.
It was not the first time I’d seen this kind of tragic story on the television news. But I kept thinking about this particular little boy because the reporter detailed how some of the boy’s neighbours had reported the family to community services a number of times, as had family-day-care staff who’d seen bruises and bites on his body.
One of the neighbours was interviewed and said that everyone in the neighbourhood had been worried about the toddler because he didn’t ‘look right’.
Later that night, lying in bed, my three-year-old daughter sleeping in the next room, I couldn’t stop thinking about those women – the neighbours and the carers – who’d tried going through formal channels to get that little boy help. But help did not come, or not enough of it to save him.
I wondered what I would do if I knew that the child next door was being abused. I’d certainly notify community services, but what if no help came, and I was worried the child would be killed?
Would I take things into my own hands?
These are the questions that prompted me to write my novel, PROMISE, in which a woman realises that the five-year-old girl next door is being badly abused. When community services don’t respond to her reports, she takes the child and runs.
Too often, the government bodies set up to protect at-risk children are only able to respond to the most urgent cases. Someone who works in this field and who I met in the course of researching the novel told me that he knew of child who hadn’t been visited by community services after seventeen reports of concern.
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I lived next door to a tyrant for 16 years, who abused his children. Aside from calling them f*^king little c*#ts from when they were toddlers, and the constant streams of obscenity laden complaints about anything they did, I was also concerned about banging I could hear, which was loud enough to be a child being thrown against a wall. Child Services wouldn't even take a report of verbal abuse, because cases were categorised from 1 to 5 in importance and that would be a 5, and they only had time to investigate a 1 or 2. They said physical abuse had to be specifically witnessed, not just suspected before they could investigate, but we could call the police during an event. Another neighbour lodged several complaints with Child Services, and stated she had witnessed physical abuse. She called the police each time there was an incident. She kept following up, but no one ever investigated. The police attended several times, but there were no serious injuries and no charges were ever laid, only ever warnings/chats with the father. Of the poor children, one moved interstate as soon as he was 18, the other was in and out of boys homes by his teens, then onto jail, and his future seemed no more bright than his childhood. Maybe it was due to a lack of funding, but I believe the system failed them.
That is absolutely heartbreaking. Those poor kids. I wouldn't have the gumption to be a social worker because I'd be too pissed off at a system that didn't allow the time to investigate everything. Why, oh why can't state governments throw enough funding at community services departments so that they are so heavily staffed that every report can be followed up?! This IS a fixable problem. It needs a hell of a lot more resources.
I don't think its problem to smack your child when they are being a little jerk (which is often) but there's a difference between one firm smack on the butt (in public or at home) and multiple clenched fist hits/kicks or starving them etc
I wouldn't jump in on a supermarket meltdown but by golly i would intervene on a neighbour. If nothing else, I would let the parent know I can see the damage and I have notified protective services. Surely just knowing that someone else knows you are abusing your kid is a pretty decent deterrent.