SIX-year-old Rikki Neave was found dead in November ,1994. There seems to be more interest in him now than when he was alive and suffering appalling cruelty from his mother.

His mother, Ruth, was cleared of his murder, but jailed for seven years after admitting cruelty to three of her four children, including Rikki.

Social workers, two of whom were suspended this week, apparently failed to act on warning signals indicating that Neave was badly mistreating Rikki and two other children.

The court heard that Neave had repeatedly asked social workers to take Rikki into care and, on the day before he vanished, she told a family aid worker that she would kill her son if she did not get help.

Only once was Rikki taken into "respite" care and he soon returned home, despite warning signs that the child was being abused. And he was put on an "at risk" register.

Sadly, Rikki Neave is not the first child to have escaped the social services "safety net". How many more children will have to endure dreadful suffering before in-depth inquiries are held early enough to protect them?

Now that ministers have ordered a social services hit-squad into Cambridgeshire to shake up child protection procedures in the wake of the case, we might get an answer.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.