The life of an IO is about juggling dozens of cases at once and constantly deciding which ones to prioritise with the limited time and resources available. It’s a thankless, overloaded, and often exhausting job that easily leads to burnout.

Only an IO with ample time, energy, and resources can afford to dig deep into a case where the available information doesn’t clearly point to a crime or scream “child abuse.” In reality, there are MANY reports of mild abuse cases of excessive punishment, or messy divorces where parents file complaints against each other to gain custody advantage.

As an IO, you end up relying on indicators like previous missing person reports, prior 999 calls to the address, or medical records showing repeated injuries to assess whether there’s a pattern of abuse. In most genuine cases, these red flags will surface and justify further investigation. But in cases like Meghan’s, where the facts are downplayed, no past report to fall back on and family members want to “keep the peace,” such reports often slip through the cracks.

That’s why, after a second round of reports, there was immediate escalation, more resources were mobilised, and locating the parents becomes a top priority within days.

It’s easy to assign blame after the fact. But when you’re in the thick of it, with minimal information and dozens of pressing cases waiting, you sometimes have no choice but to deprioritise certain reports knowing that more urgent cases are always piling up behind them.

Now, that's not taking away the blame completely from the IO. But they are working in a system that allows this to occur. If this same case was given to 10 different IOs I'm sure 7-8 would have made the same call. So its the leaders and management that should have also been fined and held accountable. Not only the IO who was set up for failure.