ONCE again social services have serious questions to answer.

Like Baby P, Shannon Matthews seems to have been let down badly by the very people who should have protected her.

As Shannon’s evil mother Karen faces years in jail, The Sun reveals how Kirklees social workers failed to act on warnings from Shannon’s teachers and Matthews’ sister Julie.

Shannon caused alarm by arriving at her school ragged and hungry.

She was put ON the child protection register — but later taken OFF it despite the head’s concern.

Social workers failed to turn up at a crucial meeting — because, they said, things had improved.

Yet Shannon’s “home” was a hell-hole ruled by a depraved mother and her pervert partner.

All this has frightening echoes of the appalling Baby P case: council complacency and incompetence leading to disaster.

At least Shannon is alive. Police fear she could have been killed by weirdo Michael Donovan, Matthews’ partner in the kidnap plot.

And what of the wicked Karen Matthews herself?

Was there ever a more revolting creature than this heartless, worthless slob who put her daughter through hell so she could steal a £50,000 reward from The Sun?

Revolting

The lies, the crocodile tears, the callous way she used her neighbours and police in her revolting game sickens us all.

If ever there was a story to make you hold your head in disbelief, this is it.

How could a MOTHER have her own little girl drugged, kidnapped, tethered like an animal and stuffed in a drawer under a bed?

Vile Karen Matthews is a product of the sink-estate underclass of chaotic families that loaf away their days on easy welfare benefits.

She is a one-woman advertisement for urgent welfare reform.

Slumped in front of her big TV, chain-smoking 60 a day and stuffing herself with pizza, Matthews didn’t give a damn for her kids.

By 30 she’d had seven children by five fathers and was raking in £360 a week in handouts.

One of her grubby lovers said: “She used us just to get pregnant so she could grab more child benefit.”

Shannon, like her siblings, was no more than a meal ticket.

The children endured misery and neglect in a pigsty where Matthews’ partner Craig Meehan wallowed in child porn.

Where were Kirklees social services when all this was going on?

Like Haringey Council they now hide behind court orders.

Baby P, Shannon Matthews . . . how many MORE of our children are suffering in silence somewhere today?