Children call charity helpline to report parents for neglect after social services fail to help

Pair were confined indoors and prevented from going to school or seeing doctor, report reveals

Two children called for help after social services missed opportunities to step in (Getty/iStock)

Two malnourished children, who had been confined to the house and prevented from going to school or attending doctor’s appointments, phoned the NSPCC to report their own parents for neglect after social services failed to intervene.

The 14-year-old boy and his 16-year-old sister told the charity they had never been enrolled at school and were illiterate, a new report has revealed.

The boy claimed there were “secrets in the family” and said he and his sister “were confined to the house and allowed out to the park only outside school hours”.

The charity informed police who then found the children to be “pale and with their appearance suggestive of being malnourished”, according to a serious case review.

There were a dozen missed opportunities where social services could have helped but didn’t, the report found.

The mother, who has health problems, had previously suggested to doctors that her partner was “coercive and controlling”.

Police officers were called to the house in April 2017, and reported a “strange and odd” situation where the children and their mother were locked inside their home and only let out when the father returned.

The girl was born with a heart disorder and missed multiple check-ups as a baby, the report found. Despite complaining of dizziness and “near blackouts” to a GP in 2016, she was not taken to hospital until two years later.

A hospital doctor then tried to raise concerns with the council’s safeguarding team but the referral was never completed.

Police were called out twice to the family home in February 2008 when the boy, then aged four, was found walking the streets alone wearing only a T-shirt and nappy.

David Peplow, chair of the Safeguarding Children Board at Waltham Forest Council, in northeast London, said the case “highlighted issues of national concern” and “areas where improvements can be made”.

The Met Police has now launched a criminal investigation into suspected child cruelty.