Baby Danny was under Social Welfare Department supervision. He still died. This week SWD came out swinging, defending its handling of the case, saying it followed procedure. Same week, HKFP reported teen suicides hit a decade high. Different ages, different circumstances, same city, same question nobody in government wants to sit with: why do the kids who are supposed to be watched keep falling through anyway.

Look, I'm not a social worker and I'm not going to pretend I know the caseload SWD is juggling. But "we followed procedure" is not the same as "the child is safe," and everyone at the market this week is saying the same thing out loud. You put a case under supervision, you're telling the public you've got eyes on it. When it ends in a dead baby, "we did the paperwork right" is not an answer, it's a dodge. Meanwhile a separate custody fight is playing out in court right now, a couple against the government over their own kid, and the teen suicide numbers are the worst in ten years. Three different stories, one thread running through them: the systems meant to catch kids before something terrible happens keep telling us afterward that they technically did their job. Somebody in the Legislative Council should be asking SWD, in public, what "supervision" actually means in hours and visits, not adjectives.