A stack of unopened Christmas presents is all this mother and father have left to remember their 10-year-old son.
WARNING: This story contains distressing content.
The Indigenous boy, who was under the care of the WA Department of Communities, died by suicide on Saturday at the home of a family member.
"The department had plans for us all to get together for Christmas," the boy's father told the ABC.
"Only one child showed up, so we ended up coming home with all the Christmas presents that we got for all of the kids."
He said the department put their son in child protection after the family was kicked out of their home during the COVID pandemic because they couldn't afford the rent.
The ABC cannot independently establish why the child was removed from his parents, but WA child protection minister Sabine Winton said children were only removed from their parents by the state as a "last resort".
The next time the parents saw their son, after more than half a year of separation, was at the morgue.
"The department never told us … my younger sister rang me and said two words: [my son's] dead," the boy's father said.
"Bright, smart … he was infectious to be around. But now I can't see him."
The boy's mother said she would hold onto the Christmas presents their son never saw as a memory of their boy.
"Keep them forever, they'll stay wrapped up forever," she said.
"We don't want this to happen to any other family. No family deserves to go through the pain we're going through right now."
'Sweeping him under the rug'
It's illegal to identify a child who has been under state care, even after their death, and with their family's permission.
Under the Children and Community Services Act (2004) it is a criminal offence to broadcast or publish anything that could lead to the identification of any child who is or was the subject of a protection order.
"We want to be able to say his name," the boy's father said.
"It's like we're just sweeping him under the rug by not being allowed to speak up and say his name.
"We don't want this to happen to any other family. No family deserves to go through the pain we're going through right now."
The boy's mother said "things need to change".
The parents acknowledged they had had "problems" in the past, but said the Department of Communities provided little support to help them back on track.
"I just want our little boy home," the boy's father said.
"To not hear from the Department and then [they] just posthumously give him back to me was just disgusting.
"He's gone, here, you can have him back now — that's exactly how it feels, and it bloody hurts."
Suicide prevention advocate and family support Gerry Georgatos said the family should be allowed to speak their son's name, and tell their own story, without being restricted by privacy laws.
"They should always be available to speak and make a decision in their own way, it's not for us to tell them not so speak," he said.
"The only way to actually address this is by keeping everybody accountable, not to harangue people, but to improve systems.
"What we need is actually people to tell their stories, and when you have a multitude of voices … you have a credible narrative and you address things in real-time."
In the wake of the boy's death, national Children's Commissioner Anne Hollonds described the tragedy as "preventable", and said the sheer volume of cases in child protection had put the system under immense strain.
"They [child protection] are like the ambulances at the bottom of the cliff," she said.
"We really need to be looking much, much earlier and upstream at the other systems like health, and education, and social services."
Ms Winton reiterated that removing a child from their family was always a last resort.
"At the heart of child protection work is staying connected with family and supporting families to reunify, because the last thing we want, and anybody wants, are for children to be taken into care," she said.
"The decision to take a child into care is not taken lightly, and is done so when there is imminent threat to the child's safety, or harm has been substantiated."
When questioned about child removal by the state on Thursday, Premier Roger Cook said it was a "complex" process.
"Children who are taken into care are always done so with the Aboriginal child principles," he said.
"Which is about ensuring, if at all possible, that child will go into care with another member of the extended family or another member of the Aboriginal community, or someone who is culturally aligned, and those principles were followed in this case."
Ms Winton said the state government had poured record investment into bolstering child protection services, and early-intervention programs.
"The investment that we've made in sum, $136 million in early-intervention programs that support child protection workers to work with families, because we know that keeping children safe is everyone's business," she told ABC Radio Perth.
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