Dani Garravelli: No one knows what goes on behind closed doors

Just because a toddler is grubby doesn't mean he's any less cherished

IT IS tempting – isn't it? – to sit in judgment on the litany of friends, relatives and neighbours who were worried about toddler Brandon Muir's welfare in the weeks before he died at the hands of his mother's boyfriend, and yet did nothing about it.

Watching from a safe distance, we can convince ourselves that if only we'd witnessed what they witnessed – the bruises, the shouting, the hands raised in anger – we would have been hammering on the door of social services, insisting the 23-month-old be removed from his drug-addicted mother and her violent partner. Hindsight makes everything appear so cut and dried: Brandon lived in "squalor". What kind of person would turn a blind eye?

Well, a large proportion of us, according to a survey published by the charity Action for Children earlier this month. It interviewed 1,000 adults and found that, though one in four had, at some point, feared for the welfare of a child, a third of those did not pass on their concerns. There are some obvious explanations for this beyond apathy: they may not have been sure how to go about reporting their suspicions; they may have feared for their own safety; or their own negative experiences may have made them wary of social workers. Then there is the theory beloved of right-wing commentators: that the liberal endorsement of cultural relativity means it is no longer socially acceptable to brand anyone an unfit parent.

I imagine there's a hint of truth in each of these, but I think the main reason people are reluctant to go to the authorities is the most obvious one: they just aren't sure it's the right thing to do. For all the attempts to try to persuade us otherwise, it's not always easy to tell if a child is being abused, and most of us still believe there is too much at stake to act on half-baked suspicions. Added to this dilemma is a lack of clarity about what is and isn't acceptable behaviour. A passer-by may be horrified to see a mother smack a small child, but if it isn't necessarily illegal what right have you got to report it?

There is confusion too over the difference between deprivation and neglect. Just because a toddler is frequently grubby or his clothes are torn, does it mean he's any less cherished than the pampered scions of middle-class professionals? Even so-called "red flag" signs of abuse can be ambiguous. Whenever I hear claims of "unusual injuries" and "raised voices", I think about how my family's shouting matches and my eight-year-old's daily batch of wounds could be misconstrued.

With poor parenting virtually endemic in some communities how do we distinguish the less-than-ideal from the truly damaging? For 10 years I lived next to an area of multiple deprivation. If I had gone to social services every time I heard a mother scream at her child: "I telt you to f***ing well move", I would never have been away from the place.

Then, last week, I saw a boy of about 18 months hurt his hand on a chute in a soft play area and run howling to find his dad, who was nowhere to be seen. As he became more distressed and a search party was launched, it emerged his father was outside, smoking a cigarette. Clearly this man was not in tune with his son's needs, but was his behaviour really an indicator of the kind of neglect that requires intervention?

And here's another thought: when the vast majority of people on a particular estate live in varying degrees of squalor; when nerves are fraught and everyone's parenting skills are tested to the limit – perhaps dubious behaviour patterns become normalised and boundaries blurred. To be brutal about it, are you going to report your neighbour for slapping her children, if you regularly leave yours home alone while you nip out to the bingo?

Even if you are 99% sure a child is being neglected, you may not be sure that contacting the authorities is in their best interests. Living with unstable parents may be preferable to being dragged screaming from their arms or ending up in care, which can inflict its own damage. And the worst of it is that you will never be able to establish whether or not you were justified. If a child is removed from his home you will be burdened with the knowledge that you split the family up; but you will never have the satisfaction of being able to say: "I saved a life."

I raise these issues not because I want to absolve the general public from stepping in to help children like Brandon. Clearly, if a toddler dies in such horrific circumstances, we must all take a share of the responsibility. But it occurs to me the drive to encourage people to act on their every suspicion is shot through with flaws. If social workers are finding it impossible to cope with the number of neglect cases they already have on their books, then what is going to happen if more are reported? They are going to have to spread themselves even more thinly, with potentially fatal consequences. And if more children at risk are identified, then what are they going to do about it? It is difficult enough to find foster carers for those who currently need placements, without looking for more.

The unpalatable truth is that – with tens of thousands of youngsters in Scotland now living with drug-addicted parents – the country's child welfare problem cannot be solved by heightened vigilance on behalf of social workers or the general public. To pretend it can is an act of denial every bit as wilful as the one committed by those who were aware of Brandon's suffering and looked the other way.