Social services face hard questions over missed red flags in boy’s starvation death

In a tragic case that has sparked questions about social services, a five-year-old boy in Hong Kong died after being starved to death by his mother, who had a history of drug abuse. The boy's fate could have been different if social workers had noticed his severe emaciation, according to a Hong Kong judge who ruled in favor of the mother.

Three months before the boy's death in September 2022, a Social Welfare Department worker visited the 37-year-old mother at home and reported finding "no visible injuries" on the child. Once the department deemed the case resolved, the boy was transferred to another social welfare organization for follow-up. It was then that a new social worker discovered the boy had missed more than two-thirds of the school days across two academic years.

Just as she initiated an investigation after failing to reach the mother, she learned of the boy's death from news reports on September 3. The boy weighed just 9.7kg (21.3 pounds) at the time of his death, about half the normal weight for his age, and was only 1 meter tall. An autopsy revealed 129 injuries on his body. A pediatric expert stated that the boy's growth had slowed down during his final 1,001 days.

The only person who noticed the boy's abnormal thinness was his mother's friend, identified only as Lau. She had observed the boy becoming significantly thinner in February 2022 and saw bruises on his limbs, warning the mother against hitting the child and encouraging her to seek help from social welfare organizations. The mother had given birth to the boy in April 2017 but had used drugs during her pregnancy, causing him to suffer from newborn substance withdrawal symptoms.

After the boy's birth, his older sister and younger brother were also placed in foster care due to the mother's drug abuse. The mother was hospitalized for three months from August to November 2019, after which a hospital doctor deemed her "capable of providing adequate appropriate care" to her children. In August 2020, the Social Welfare Department approved the boy's return to the parents' care, and the other two children were gradually returned home.

Despite repeated alerts from a school social worker about the boy's absences and various indicators of high-risk behavior, the family was eventually referred to a different social service center after the initial case workers deemed the child abuse elements had subsided. The judge's ruling highlights the need for a comprehensive review of the child protection system and relevant legislation, questioning whether the assessment tools designed for high-risk cases have failed to perform adequately.