Parents risk charges over home-alone children

PARENTS who leave children at home alone without adequate back-up risk being charged with child neglect, the ISPCC warned yesterday.

Caroline O’Sullivan, the ISPCC’s director of services, said, while it did not want to frighten parents whose children were too old for supervised childcare, they needed to be aware that they must do everything to ensure their children were safe.

She said, judging by the calls to Childline, children left home alone, particularly at night, was a modern problem. She said the service would consider highlighting the number of those calls in the future.