The Question We Don't Ask!

On average in the UK a child is killed by their parent or step-parent at least once per week, and this shocking statistic has been the same for the past 5 years, according to a study by the NSPCC.

This being the case children, especially young children are at risk of harm, not from strangers, but from the very people you would expect would want to protect them most.

The really startling thing is that given the regularity of filicides or child homicides by their parents, this behaviour is clearly not rare or even unusual.

What is, I would suggest, worrying is that we as a society don't seem to ask ourselves the salient question, in other words: what's going on in society that produces or gives rise to significant numbers of parents who abuse and murder their children?

Instead of asking ourselves this question, when a child is killed by their parent, it seems what we prefer to do is to blame anyone associated with, or charged with some responsibility for safeguarding the child.

Social Workers are particularly easy to blame, even when they have followed the required steps and procedures. The police, teachers and health professionals are also targets of criticism and censure.

I think we do this because as a society we are unable to live with how this makes us feel, and as a result it feels easier for many to cope with this discomfort by blaming others rather than facing the reality of life, not just in the UK but all around the globe.

So we seek people to criticise rather than focus upon the fact that something (at least in my opinion) is very wrong with the communities that we're living in.

There is something about the way we live, the way we behave, talk about and treat others, something about the state of the society we live in, that produces parents who abuse and end up murdering their children.

And for me the way we tend to deal with this by blaming and criticising others, instead of looking at how we can all play our part in making our communities pleasanter and safer places to live and grow up children; plays a crucial role in ensuring the tragedies we sadly hear about all too often, continue to occur.

It does seem to me given the frequency with which children are abused and killed that we should be waking up to the reality that with the best will in the world, that social workers cannot always save children.

The likely truth of the matter is that social workers, teachers, health professionals and police officers play their part in saving hundreds of lives per year, but we will never know how many children they save.

The media, society and the powers that be unfortunately, really only seem to be focused on the numbers of children who sadly are killed, whilst known to professionals.

For me this is short sighted and speaks volumes about some of the most negative aspects of the society we live in.