Child Neglect

The parents of Lea-Sophie were arrested this week on charges of neglect after allegedly failing to adequately feed their daughter for months on end. She died on Tuesday, Nov. 20, after being admitted to a hospital in Schwerin, weighing just over seven kilos (15 pounds) -- three times less than an average child her age.

Her death has prompted calls from politicians for more thorough preemptive controls.

"I am a vehement advocate of making preventative medical check-ups compulsory," Kerstin Griese, the Social Democratic chairwoman of the German parliament's family affairs committee told the daily Berliner Zeitung on Friday. "This would provide a fundamental building block for child protection."

But Wolfram Hartmann, president of the Pediatricians Association, told DPA that gaps between such visits are too long to make them effective.

"It would be wrong to think that compulsory health checks could prevent cases of child neglect," he said.

Instead, Hartmann argued for greater cooperation between health officials and social workers.

Opposition parties agree that the problem is a result of authorities failing to do their job.

"Given that cuts have been made in youth-protection offices for years, it should come as no surprise that these cases happen," said Jörn Wunderlich from the Left Party.

Effects of cost-cutting

Every time such stories make the headlines in Germany, the nation is left wondering how these families can fall through the net. Fingers are invariably pointed at the child-protection services. When a two-year old died in Bremen last year, many blamed the local welfare office which had left the boy in the care of his drug-addicted foster father despite repeated warnings.

The authorities in Schwerin have also come in for criticism. Hermann Junghans, head of Schwerin Social Services, insists that welfare officers did their job properly but has admitted that the two social workers who visited the family a fortnight ago after an anonymous tip-off had "found nothing amiss."

Neighbors, meanwhile, said the two social workers never actually entered the apartment.

According to newspaper reports, Heike Seifert, head of Schwerin's Youth Welfare Office, complained to the local council earlier this year that financial cuts were hampering the work of the office.

On Friday, Schwerin's mayor, Norbert Claussen, acknowledged flaws in the welfare system.

Lea-Sophie's death "showed that adequate mechanisms are not in place," he said in a statement.

Heike Seifert, meanwhile, was quoted in the daily taz as saying that this was by no means the first time that children had been admitted with symptoms of malnutrition to hospitals in Schwerin.

The number of child endangerment cases has been increasing in the town, confirmed Junghans at a press conference this week. Eighty-six cases were registered in the first six months of 2007. In 2006, the figure was 133, compared to just 42 in 2005.