Maybe they did. Until recently I was naive enough to believe that if you reported a child being neglected, uncared for and so on, it got dealt with. Then I worked with a child, who I was constantly reporting - wearing the same clothes for weeks at a time (by this I mean really dirty, unwashed clothes from one week to the next), child not receiving medical attention for problems that they had had for months, not being adequately dressed for the weather, lack of food in school lunches, mouldy bread, and so on. After a few months, I questioned why nothing seemed to be done, and was told that to prove neglect, the barrier is actually very high. So when I was reporting the child still wearing the food covered, urine-smelling clothes of the previous week, at the start of school on Monday, apparently the fact that she "had clothes" meant that it wasn't neglect. Seriously! That was just one example. That shocked me.
I also found that the well-meaning school was covering up a lot of the problem (not deliberately) for example by providing her with clean clothes, giving her a free meal. They did it to ensure she was getting the care she needed, but in reality, it was masking the problem. I had to take on personal care issues (against my wishes), because it wasn't happening at home. That bothered me, because we were doing what the parent should have been doing, then the issue "disappeared".
Also, another family I reported for neglect were given advance warning of a visit from child protection services, so obviously they could clean up their house, clean up their children and so on. That was some years ago now, I don't know if things have changed.
