A Children’s Social Worker Was Found Guilty of Keeping 84 Dogs in Squalor

David Parkes spent his working life assessing the welfare of children in Doncaster. A court has now found that the welfare of the 84 dogs and two cats inside his family home in Tickhill was a very different matter. 

Parkes, 61, a children’s social worker, was found guilty on September 29 of three animal welfare offences following a two-day trial at Barnsley Magistrates Court. The verdict came after nine RSPCA officers, accompanied by police and local authority representatives, entered his property on Galley Hill on April 18, 2025, and found conditions they described as appalling. 

What Officers Found 

The animals, predominantly Springer Spaniel-type dogs, were discovered in conditions described in court as stinking, filthy, and squalid. Vets who examined the animals found many of them heavily matted, covered in faeces and urine, and underweight. The court heard they had been kept in an inadequate space without sufficient food, water, or enrichment. 

One dog had an “excruciatingly painful” leg fracture. Five others had infected wounds. One RSPCA officer was so affected by the conditions inside the property that she had to leave and vomit outside. 

Parkes Denied Owning the Dogs 

Throughout the investigation and into the trial, Parkes maintained that he did not own the animals and was not responsible for them. That position was difficult to sustain. 

When RSPCA officers arrived to remove the animals, Parkes was present and helped them. He later signed a document transferring the animals into RSPCA care, identifying himself as the owner. During the investigation, he told officers that the dogs were registered with vets in the names of himself, his wife, and his son, and referred to the clinic as “the practice we use.” When it was put to him on April 28, 2025 that the three family members owned the dogs, he responded: “To some capacity, yes.” 

The court did not accept his denial. After two days of proceedings, he was found guilty of three animal welfare offences. 

The Contradiction at the Centre of the Case 

The detail that has drawn the most attention is Parkes’s profession. As a children’s social worker, his job was to identify risk and neglect in family environments, to recognise the signs that a child was not being cared for properly, and to act on them. The conditions found inside his own home suggest that awareness did not extend to the animals under his roof. 

Sentencing has not yet been announced. The RSPCA, which led the investigation, has not commented publicly on the outcome beyond confirming the verdict. 

All 86 animals were removed from the property on the day of the raid and taken into RSPCA care.