As Khyra Ishaq’s five siblings came to terms with their new lives in foster care last night, there was a clamour for answers as to how a seven-year-old girl was apparently allowed to starve to death in 21st-century Britain.

Charities and politicians called for a full inquiry into her death, soon after she was found critically ill at her home in Handsworth, Birmingham, on Saturday. Pressure grew on the city council’s social services amid claims of staff shortages and a reliance on agency employees. But nowhere was the desire for answers stronger than in the community where Khyra lived, with her mother, stepfather, two sisters and three brothers.

Angela Gordon, 33, and Junaid Abuhamza, 29, have been remanded in custody charged with causing or allowing the schoolgirl’s death through neglect. The other five children were placed under an emergency protection order and taken initially to Birmingham Children’s Hospital, before being placed in foster care.

In Leyton Road, where they lived, there was incredulity: “Starved? As in nothing to eat?” asked a motorist, who slowed to talk to his friend as she laid flowers outside the family’s red-brick terraced house. “In England? That doesn’t even happen in Jamaica,” he added.

Another bunch of flowers left outside Khyra’s home bore a note asking the question on everyone’s lips: “Why? RIP little angel, from a local resident.”

Neighbours have said that Ms Gordon had talked of educating her children at home, and yesterday through the one window not covered by metal shutters, teaching materials including a thesaurus and maths textbook could be seen alongside a book called Growing Child. The garden was overgrown, with rolls of flooring and an old mattress lying close to a deflated football and a frisbee.

Ms Gordon had reportedly taken her children out of the nearby Grove Primary School about ten weeks ago, amid allegations of bullying. The parent of one child at the school said that Khyra and her siblings “didn’t seem to like wearing the Muslim head wear” at the mixed-race school.

Bhaljender Kaur Arandhawa, 55, who lives a few doors away, said that frequently she saw Khyra looking happy with her mother until around two months ago: “It changed quite suddenly from seeing them quite often to never.” But another neighbour, who did not want to be named, described a family so reclusive that she had no idea there were six, rather than three, children until after Khyra’s death.

She claimed that after she put some stale bread for the birds in her garden, Ms Gordon came to her house “screaming” that she had given it to her children. Few people appear to have seen the children since their last day at Grove School.

Khalid Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, has been told that an educational support worker did visit their home, and demanded a “proper structural inquiry” into what went wrong. The children “were taken out of school, allegedly for home schooling, and nothing has been done about it”, he said, criticising the council for “battening down the hatches” rather than calming fears: “The case is sub judice but there’s a bigger issue about reassuring the community.”

One employee in Birmingham’s children’s services department told The Times that social workers were overloaded and individuals could not be held “responsible for everything” given the “lack of resources and limited support”. “There is a lack of social workers, too much work and people are leaving because the job is too stressful,” she said.

Mor Dioum, co-founder of the Victoria Climbié Foundation, echoed calls for an inquiry. “It’s just shocking in 21st-century Britain for a child to die of starvation, regardless of the authorities’ and individuals’ responsibilities.”

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