Social services face hard questions over missed red flags in boy’s starvation death

The fate of a five-year-old boy starved to death by his mother, who had a history of drug abuse, could have been different had social workers noticed he was “just skin and bones”, a Hong Kong judge lamented in her ruling. Just three months before the boy died in September 2022, a worker from the Social Welfare Department handling the case visited the 37-year-old mother at home and reported observing “no visible injuries” on the boy’s face or any irregularities. After the department concluded...