A MOTHER who spent hours drinking in pubs rather than looking after her 11-year-old son could be jailed.

She left the boy home alone for an entire day with only a bag of crisps to eat and ignored concerned members of the public who urged her to go home and care for him, York Crown Court heard.

Police had already cautioned her for failing to take the child to a doctor after young babysitters injured him when he was four years old.

The 47-year-old woman, a single mother from Selby, pleaded guilty to child neglect. Judge Colin Burn deferred sentence for six months while social workers finish assessing the family and deciding on the boy’s future. He is currently in foster care.

The judge told the mother, who cannot be identified: “You must co-operate completely and fully with these assessments.” He told her if she failed to do this, he would be forced to jail her.

Tony Kelbrick, prosecuting, said the mother was cautioned in 2004 for not seeking medical attention for her child, then aged four. She had left him in the care of two young girls who had “abused and harmed” him.

On March 8 this year, the son, now 11, arrived at the home of a friend of his mother at 8.45pm and said he had not seen his mother since that morning.

“He had only eaten a bag of crisps that day and had been on his own,” said Mr Kelbrick.

The friend reported the incident to social services. But on March 27, the day before a child protection conference on his future, the boy was back at her home at 8.45pm, again saying he did not know where his mother was and that he had not been fed.

At 9pm, the friend’s parents found the mother in a Selby pub and told her to go home.

“She didn’t, she carried on drinking,” said Mr Kelbrick.

On another occasion, the mother was found in a pub with her boyfriend at 10.30pm, again having been drinking.

On April 2, an anonymous phone call alerted police that the son had been seen on a street corner at 10.30pm. Officers went out to find him – until the mother’s friend rang them to say he was safe at her home, asleep on her settee.

The mother claimed she had thought the child was at a party, but she did not know when he was due to leave.

For the mother, Chloe Fairley said her client was terrified of what the judge might do to her.