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A mum whose naked three-year-old son was found wandering the streets covered in faeces has been jailed.

The terrified toddler approached a passerby begging for help.

The tot approached a woman and asked her: “Can I come with you? I need help?” after he was spotted walking on the road.

The woman called police after she asked the little lad where his mum was, and he replied: “She always goes to sleep.”

His mum eventually found him and took him home but when social services arrived later they found him asleep, covered in a coat and lying next to a box of vomit on his bed.

The authorities also came across diarrhoea on the landing of the house in Shirebrook, Derbyshire.

The child’s mum was arrested and last Thursday she admitted one count of child neglect and was jailed for six months at Derby Crown Court, the Birmingham Mail reports.

Judge Jonathan Bennett told her: “The incident itself is a harrowing one.

“The woman was with her own little boy when she then meets your little boy who is covered in faeces.

“He was completely lost, had no clothing on whatsoever and appeared to her to have no road sense.

“The little boy said to her, ‘Can I come with you? I need help’ and she sensed the boy was in danger.

“She had to help him, he was in a dreadful state and was exposed to tremendous danger.

“I accept you were in an abusive relationship at the time and that you had your hands full but the duty of the court is to protect the most vulnerable people in our society and this little boy was particularly vulnerable.”

The court heard the boy was found wandering the streets in March last year.

Prosecutor Abigail Joyce, prosecuting, said: “The woman said he was very skinny, pale, completely naked and he had faeces on his arms and legs.

“She said it was like he had been lying in his own poo.”

Miss Joyce said the boy approached the woman and her son and said to her, “Can I come with you? I need help”.

She said: “She asked him where his mother was and he replied: ‘She always goes to sleep’.”

The police were called and the authorities went to the nearby house where the boy had been taken by his mum.

Miss Joyce said: “They found the boy, who had since been cleaned, asleep on a bed next to a box of sick. He was covered in a coat but had no clothes on.”

Emma Covelly, defending, said: “She accepts she was incapable of carrying out her duties as a mother at that time.

“But her position is now improved as she has got away from the con-trolling relationship she was in, although that does not absolve her of her duties.”

Speaking after sentencing, a spokesman for children’s charity the NSPCC said: “This vulnerable little boy’s most basic needs were clearly not being met.

“No child should ever have to live in these appalling conditions.”