Bronson Battersby: a toddler's tragic death

Everyone agreed that Bronson Battersby was "an adorable little boy", said Paul Bracchi in the Daily Mail. 

You can see it in the photo of him gazing up at the camera in his Pudsey pyjamas (a cruel irony, since Pudsey is the mascot for BBC Children in Need). Bronson, "as almost everyone must know", was the two-year-old boy who was found lying dead alongside his 60-year-old father, Kenneth, in a basement flat in Skegness earlier this month. It seems Kenneth had suffered a fatal heart attack a few days after Christmas, leaving Bronson alone. Too small to open the fridge, he'd starved to death.

A 'distressing fate'

A neighbour had heard him calling "Daddy" in the early hours of New Year's Day, but had not intervened; social workers making routine welfare checks had twice alerted the police when no one answered the door, but no officers visited. Bronson's distressing fate was finally discovered on 9 January. In a grim postscript, thieves broke in in the days following and stole Kenneth's wallet.

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Bronson's mother, Sarah Priesse, has blamed social services for his death. But social workers aren't allowed to break down doors, said Dipesh Gadher in The Times, and though Bronson was deemed "in need", he was not considered to be at risk of serious harm. His father was known to be struggling – he drank, and had injured his foot – but there was no suggestion that he was abusing Bronson. In fact, the police seem to have thought that the greater threat was posed by Piesse's current partner, and for that reason they may have gone to her flat instead. Piesse had split up with Kenneth Battersby six months ago, and lived nearby with their other two children. Neighbours said that she'd had ten children in all, and that she had problems with drink and drugs. Having rowed with Battersby, she'd not seen Bronson since November.

'Vital social services need more funding'

The last person to see Bronson alive was a neighbour, who waved at him through a window on Boxing Day. It's shocking that no friends or family checked up on him, said Chris Finnigan in The Independent. But in towns like Skegness, with high levels of deprivation, people lead chaotic, isolated lives, leaving social services to pick up the pieces. In England, about 32,000 social workers manage some 400,000 vulnerable children. Their jobs are getting harder, owing to rising poverty levels and pressures on other services (GPs, for instance, tend no longer to have relationships with families), but their numbers are falling. Why would a graduate go into social work, on a starting salary of £24,000, when they could make far more in tech? The blunt fact is, it's a vital sector and it needs more funding.