Despair and rage at my own inability to act in the situation are usually among my mixed reactions to stories of events that have badly affected small children.
That was the case when I read a news story in an issue of the Scotsman last month. It reported on a three-year-old Edinburgh boy who was locked up alone in a Council flat for two weeks with his mother's dead body.
He survived by eating chips and other food and drink he found in the fridge. He was too small to reach the front door handle and couldn't contact anyone because the flat was at the end of the corridor and no one could hear him. He pushed back mail posted through the slot in the door, but it still took two weeks for anyone to realise there was something wrong.
Finally people from his nursery school went to find out where he was. They said he was skeletal, but doctors and carers worried more about the effect of the psychological and emotional damage he suffered.
Imagine his fear and loneliness. What will be the story of his life?
The Edinburgh story was circulating at the same time we saw Crown Prince Frederick and Princess Mary of Denmark taking their four-day-old son home from the hospital. He is born to wealth and privilege and the adulation of a nation. He will know no other existence.
This year we heard also of the children who died in the vengeful waves of the tsunami; and of the children who died in their school rooms during the devastating earthquake in the mountains of Pakistan and Kashmir.
Tragedies like these impel me to be a resolute supporter of NGOs that have the welfare, health and safety of children as their priority.
Of course these are overseas stories. But life is not cloud nine for many Australian children. Some are victims of paedophiles, or family violence. Some suffer through being in a dysfunctional or broken family, some are kidnapped because of parental infighting. The Age reported last month that every year 170 children are abducted and taken overseas " or brought to Australia " by a parent.
Equally disturbing was the news that one in ten babies under the age of one year was reported to the NSW Department of Community Services (DoCS) under suspicion of abuse or neglect in the last financial year.
The DoCS Director-General Neil Shepherd said that these cases spring from drug and alcohol addictions, mental illness, poverty and domestic violence. He said the numbers were "really scary" and show that "there is something seriously wrong out there".
He said it wasn't just a matter of people reporting crying babies, for "over 80 per cent of these reports are regarded as warranting serious investigation".
Mr Shepherd said the DoCS offices were grossly understaffed, even three years after the State Government announcement a five-year funding package of $1.2 billion.
What is needed to right this outrage in NSW? Definitely a better resourced and staffed DoCS, but also better parental leave, better child care and parenting programs to assist the dysfunctional, overstretched and stressed parents, early childhood and family intervention, and welfare for single mothers and single fathers. And that's just the start.
There should be an absolute commitment from every politician, public servant, opinion leader, including church leaders, and every citizen of goodwill to right these inexcusable wrongs in our community.
The Lord Jesus was under threat from a tyrannical ruler when he was very small. His loving, caring parents uprooted themselves and fled to Egypt as refugees to save his life.
Even so all the male children two years and under in Bethlehem died at the hand of Herod the tyrant.
Scripture says "A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more."
Pray Rachel's cries will never be heard because of our inaction or disinterest.
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