Woeful situations made worse by inaction and bad decisions

FOR a flavour of the chaos and desperation contained in the report, we turn to the story of ‘Young Person in Care 8’.

“He suffered from severe neglect as a toddler. He was found at one stage trying to eat fish fingers from the freezer. When his mother died [of a drugs overdose], he was discovered with her body. At that time, his father was serving a long- term prison sentence overseas.”

Young Person in Care 8 died in 2009 aged just 16 and his story highlights many of the dreadful aspects of lives blighted by neglect, family breakdown, crime and drug and alcohol misuse.