Orphan boy of 16 abandoned by the state to bring up sister and brothers
32 years on, council admits failings and pays £100,000 compensation
FOUR orphaned siblings left to fend for themselves after they were abandoned by social services have received compensation for their ordeal.
The children’s parents died in a freak accident more than 30 years ago.
Social services in Liverpool left the eldest child James Hawkins, who was then just 16, to look after his two younger brothers Steven, nine, Anthony, eight, and sister Colette, 15.
Living hand-to-mouth on benefits, they endured ‘appalling’ conditions and had so little money that they often ate vinegar sandwiches or dog biscuits for dinner. They even had to sell their dog to scrape together a few extra pennies.
Now Liverpool City Council has handed them a payout totalling just under £100,000 for the appalling neglect they suffered. Last night the authority admitted: ‘ The council let these young people down over 30 years ago. Since that time there have been many changes in social work practice and safeguards are in place to prevent it happening now.’
But the siblings say they have been emotionally scarred for life by the shocking dereliction of duty.
The children’s parents James Hawkins, 38, a lorry driver, and Eileen, 36, died suddenly in December 1983 after they mistakenly drank pure alcohol, believing it was vodka. They had been given it as a gift for their wedding anniversary.
They became ill shortly after drinking the spirit and were taken to hospital, where Mrs Hawkins died that afternoon. Her husband was treated and returned home but he died in bed that night.
No other family members were able to care for the children; their paternal grandfather and both their mother’s parents were dead, and their paternal grandmother was ill and died a few months later.
So social services were called in to draft a plan of care for them. They decided the children should be kept together, but rather than setting up a proper network of support, they appointed James as the head of the family, giving him control of their benefits. A social worker, Beverley Burke, was assigned to their case to ensure their welfare, but the children say she rarely visited their house in Dovecot, Liverpool, and nothing was done to help them.
James tried his best to look after his family, but with so little money it was understandably hugely difficult. The siblings lived in squalor and often went hungry. The two youngest boys had to work on milk rounds to earn some extra money for the family, getting up at 2.30am to do so before going to school.
Anthony, now 39, said: ‘The situation quickly deteriorated and we were always hungry, infrequently at school and clothed in hand-medowns. It was dreadful.
‘The conditions we lived in were totally appalling. The place was a doss house and we often had no money and hardly any food. We had to sell the TV and even the dog for extra pennies.
Dinner was often vinegar sandwiches or plain noodles and we were so hungry we ate dog biscuits. It was a desperate situation but we did our best to survive.’ He added: ‘The destitution was on Dickensian levels.’
They became so neglected that worried teachers chipped in to buy Anthony a new pair of shoes and Steven a new school uniform.
Eventually James suffered a nervous breakdown. Now 48, he said: ‘The pressure was just too much for me. I wanted us to stay together but we got little or no support from social services. Our social worker ... just wasn’t around. I tried my best but social services failed me and that failure changed my life forever. Things would have been so different had they stepped in.’
James has never held down a job and still suffers severe aftershocks from his mental breakdown.
Colette, now 46, who has learning difficulties, is a mother of two and lives with her partner in assisted living accommodation. Steven, 41, struggled at school but became a successful IT manager. Anthony achieved eight GCSEs, went on to study electrical engineering and is now also an IT manager. A father of two, he is married to former Olympic hurdler Diane Allahgreen.
It was Miss Allahgreen who got the civil case brought against Liverpool’s council three decades after their failings. After her athletic career, she decided to become a social worker, and when she heard of the appalling neglect suffered by her husband’s family she felt something had to be done to ensure it never happened again.
Astonishingly, when the family applied for details of their dealings with social services, the council said they had no records of them whatsoever. Council bosses had no explanation for why this is the case.
Richard Scorer, of law firm Slater and Gordon, which represented the family, said: ‘It is simply terrible to think of any child being left to fend for themselves, especially after losing both their parents.
‘These were vulnerable youngsters who should have been able to trust and rely on the adults around them, but instead they felt abandoned and alone. This case may date back decades but what happened deeply affected them all.’
The family believe they may have been victims of the Labour ‘Loony Left’ running the council in the 1980s. Firebrand Derek Hatton, the deputy leader, and his clique of Trotskyite militants brought Liverpool to its knees in 1985 by deliberately overspending in a bid to challenge Margaret Thatcher’s central government, sparking the worst financial crisis in the city’s modern history.