Please Look After My Babies
Lynne Barrett-Lee, Casey Watson

It’s a bitterly cold day  in February when Casey gets a call from her supervising social worker, Christine, to ask if she could take on a six year old boy. ‘As a matter of urgency,’ she explains, ‘though we don’t know much about him just yet. Only that he’s been living with his grandfather for something like a year, is malnourished, and has speech and language problems. Is it something you could help with?’

Casey and Mike immediately agree to the placement, and when Corben arrives later that day he is a very sorry sight. He’s virtually skin and bones, his dark hair is long and matted, and his toes are pushing through his battered trainers. And, despite the cold, all he’s wearing are green school PE shorts and a fraying jumper that is obviously far too small for him. And if that wasn’t enough to tug at Casey’s heartstrings, all the lad has with him is a carrier bag, containing only a pair of dirty pyjamas. ‘I only met him this morning,’ the accompanying social worker says. ‘A colleague asked me to step in at the last minute and collect him from his grandad’s. I’m not too sure what went on, but I assumed there’d  at least be some clothes and toys. But, well, as you can see…’ she adds, shrugging, ‘this is it. Well apart from a ‘good riddance’ from the grandad – though said in more colourful way.’ 

It’s a grim hint of challenges to come. The Watsons soon realise that this little boy has far more problems than first indicated, and it also turns out that he’s been involved with social services before. A year previously, he’d turned up at his school (where he was frequently absent) with his younger two siblings in tow. Then three and 18 months, both had been pushed there, by Corben, in the sort of trolley people use when they’re camping. His mission? To ask if they could give them any food. Following that, investigations revealed that they were being neglected by their mother, but, rather than take all the children into care at that time, social services just took the younger two. The paternal grandfather, it seemed, had been keen to step up and wanted to at least take in and care for his eldest grandchild.

It now transpires that this had been a mistake. Far from the loving relative who had presented himself, apparently keen to help, Corben’s grandad has been abusing him ever since. It’s only now, following a very long overdue statutory visit, that the true situation has come to light. It has been a case of ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire’, and, as the children had originally been living in a different authority, the true picture had been completely missed; Corben hadn’t even been registered at a  new local school.  It seemed the only reason the grandfather had stepped up in the first place was because he thought it would mean lots of extra money. 

After settling in, as far as possible, Corben is enrolled in Casey’s local primary, and things start going badly from the outset.  Though the school are doing their best, Casey has to pick him up almost every day due to one issue after another; bad and racist language, urinating in the playground, and, most concerningly, smearing his own poo in the school bathrooms. He is, in fact, all but feral.

In the background, Casey’s team are trying to uncover what they can, but the boy hasn’t yet been allocated a personal social worker. So, after three weeks, a duty worker calls to do a statutory visit. Ralph, the guy who comes, is from out of area and when he sees Corben he is startled to find he already knows him. He was the social worker sent to make the welfare visit to the grandad that resulted in Corben going into care. ‘I just acted immediately,’ he tells Casey. ‘The lad’s bed was maggot-infested and soaking wet with pee. There was excrement all over his bedroom, and he had no toys, nothing to wear and nothing to do. It was awful. Grandad had a houseful of local drunks in there, two passed out on the sofa, and Corben showed me a cupboard on the landing where he would climb in and hide under a  filthy duvet till grandad went to sleep. There were a couple of slices of stale bread in there when I saw it - Corben told me he’d stolen them to eat that night. It never occurred to me that I’d see him again.’

So Corben stepped not just into the fire, Casey thinks, but into a raging inferno of horrendous neglect. But there is no point in anger. The only way to look now is forwards. To the prospect of her and Mike bringing some stability and love to Corben’s life, and doing their best to socialise him before he goes up for adoption. One thing’s for sure, though. It’s going to be a long, bumpy journey…