By Gerard Tubb, Sky News Correspondent
A serious case review will be published today into the death of a four-year-old boy whose body lay undiscovered for almost two years after he was allowed to starve to death by his mother.
Mother-of-eight Amanda Hutton, 43, was jailed for 15 years in October after she was found guilty of the manslaughter of her son, Hamzah Khan.
Hamzah's decomposed body was found in a cot in Hutton's bedroom at their home in Bradford, West Yorkshire.
The review into the youngster's death is the latest in a series of investigations in recent years into children dying from starvation and neglect in Britain.
Now one children's charity is warning of a "frightening" demand for crisis support in parts of Bradford, with underweight, hungry children being brought to nursery by parents who can't afford the food they need.
Across the UK in the past eight years at least seven children have wasted away, as Hamzah did, from what academics call extreme deprivational neglect.
Most of them, like Hamzah, were simply starved to death.
Research from University of East Anglia for children's charity the NSPCC shows none of them were on an 'At Risk' register - in other words child protection agencies did not know they were dying of hunger.
Amanda Hutton lived with her son's dead body for almost two years In Hamzah's case the police, social services and health workers all discussed the risks he faced from the alcoholism and chaotic lifestyle of his mother Amanda Hutton, who was the victim of sustained domestic violence, but his weight loss, like his death, went unnoticed.
It was almost two years before his dried out body, wearing a filthy nappy and dressed in clothes made for a nine month old baby, was found in his cot.
Bradford Council's Child Poverty Action Strategy, a document which has been a legal requirement since 2010, states: "The levels of child poverty in Bradford are unacceptably high."
Statistics show a link between poverty and child welfare: children living in areas of high deprivation are at greater risk of injury and early death and are more likely to be subject to child protection measures.
According to reports from the charity The Children's Society, Hamzah and his siblings were far from the only children suffering from malnutrition in Bradford.
At the city's Gateway Children's Centre, in a neighbouring postcode district to Hamzah's squalid home, it talks of a current "frightening and well documented demand for crisis support, most notably, food bank referrals".
Photographs showed the squalid conditions inside Hutton's home In August this year the charity says staff talked of parents skipping meals in order to provide for their families and children regularly coming to the nursery hungry, having not had breakfast.
"Many of the children visiting the centre at Gateway are underweight," It states.
Kath Tunstall, the head of children's services in Bradford, says Hamzah's case is tragic, but insists her department and other agencies were simply unaware of his plight.
"No serious concerns were reported to the statutory agencies," she told local MPs in a briefing note sent on the day Hutton was sentenced for Hamzah's manslaughter.
"This is not a case where lots of agencies were involved and didn't see the signs, the question is how can this happen and professionals, neighbours, communities not be aware of it and so there will be lessons to be learned," she wrote.
It is a claim that has been dismissed by a former neighbour of Hutton who cannot be named to protect the identity of Hamzah's siblings.
"For them to blame the community is ridiculous, the community including those who lived next door didn't even know Hamzah existed so how could they have done anything about it," she said.
"The point is social services did know he existed. They knew a lot more than the community."
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