What I am about to write in no way condones what happened to that child and the other children in her care. As a caregiver though, I am not overly surprised. I will bet that she is from a lower income group, not highly educated, and has no support structure. No mention is made of the husband/boyfriend that fathered the children. Where are the reports of the doctors and other health care people who should be seeing the child regularly? So many, many times caregivers are sent off to care for the sick or disabled with no training, help, or follow up. They struggle along not aware of what types of help are available and the people who should have helped them in the first place let them fall thru the cracks. Unless/until they fall apart or something bad happens that drives them to bring it to someone's attention, the situation continues. Caregivers get overwhelmed, exhausted, depressed, don't eat right, have no time to research their options themselves. Often the doctors are also not aware ( some don't even care) to find out what is there for them. The old idea of "stick them in an institution" still applies for many. Even when their world falls apart, they are too frightened to ask for help...thinking that they will be punished in some way. You try to prioritize but there are only so many hours in the day. If there are any eating issues at all then EVERYTHING has to be put aside to deal with them and that is not always possible. If it takes a caregiver 4 hours per meal to get all the nutrition in then that is 12 hours a day for feeding alone.

I know this because 12 years ago my DH had surgery for kidney cancer. His post surgical care was screwed up but no one wanted to admit it. So, they blamed the resulting problems on him, (post surgical depression/passive aggressive behavior) on me, on our aides. His eating and care issues went on for months, we lost aides because of it, and I finally had a nervous breakdown. It was taking us 10 hours a day just for feedings. I only had 6 hours of help per day for his personal care, laundry, cleaning his room, therapies etc. I was pulling 22 hour days. This was just my DH and myself. We had no children. The gerbils we had didn't get the care they needed but they were fed and watered. The cat was also fed and watered but he got very little attention otherwise. We were getting aides to come in. I was talking to his doctors fairly regularly about the problems. We did have a counselor coming in weekly for sessions and yet no one picked up on the fact that I was in deep deep trouble until the day that the counselor came in to find me on a cot in DH's room, in clothes I had been in for days and crying hysterically. Within an hour, hubby was in the ER being evaluated, I was being swamped by various medical and state investigators asking "What went wrong?". Because it looked like someone else was going to have to care for hubby if I couldn't, everyone got together and found out what help there was for us. Hubby was kept at the hospital, as was I (so I could rest under supervision), and we weren't sent home until things were made somewhat better. BUT that is often what it takes.

My guess is that the clues were there but no one paid any freaking attention. We lived in Detroit for a couple of years, right in the heart of the city, in a residential hotel. This was before DH's aneurysm. There was another residential hotel accross the street and every workday a couple that worked took their elderly handicapped father and placed him outside the building and left him there for the day. No food, water, or shelter. Everyday, people passed him by, including religious professionals, police, fire, ambulance...no one did anything. No one helped. When I wanted to I was told to "mind my own business".
Before you condemn the mother, many questions should be asked. The biggest one being, as a society, are we failing the most helpless among us?