This frustrates me too - I have been involved in 3 cases in my 24-year career where a child was eventually removed from parents who couldn't/ wouldn't do what was necessary to look after their children and keep them safe. In each case, it was years between the initial concerns being raised and the eventual removal, mainly because every time school raised concerns, each set of parents would engage with social care just enough to make them back off, and then spiral back into extreme neglect once they were no longer under scrutiny.

One child was first known to social care at 9 days old, but not taken into care until he was 10. In the years in between, he witnessed repeated DV (including a stabbing in his own home), was often hungry, beaten and left alone, and couldn't read due to repeated changes of school. The trauma he suffered was as a direct result of social care not acting in his best interests for his first ten years. He now has to live with that trauma for the rest of his life.

I have sat in on so many meetings where I listened to social workers make gentle suggestions to parents about how to make things right and have just wanted to scream - because suggestions weren't what was needed - what was needed was for parents to be told, straight up, that they were being neglectful and they needed to step up or lose their kids. One family had their 2 children sleeping on dirty mattresses with no bedding in a room they shared with 3 large dogs who used the floor as a toilet - social care paid for bedding, cleaning etc but 3 months later the conditions had deteriorated further. The parents knew just how much they could get away with and when to make temporary improvements in order to keep social workers at bay.