Two mums have caused outrage by leaving their respective children - the youngest just 11 months old - in inadequate care, while they jetted off abroad. Sarah Foster asks what might have prompted their drastic actions and what their children will have suffered.

KELLY Ann Rogerson in a bar, acting loud and leery. Elaine Walker with her toyboy lover, locking lips for the cameras. These two images have sent shockwaves throughout the country, provoking widespread censure. People simply couldn't understand - couldn't even contemplate the thought - that these were mothers, and that their children, so far from their minds, were left languishing at home.

Kelly Ann Rogerson was the first to cause a storm. The 24-year-old from Darlington took a sunshine break in Turkey, staying with two friends in the resort of Marmaris. She left her children, four-year-old Shauna, Stevie, two, and 11-month-old Michael with 15-year-old babysitter Kayleigh Lowe.

It was only when her landlady raised objections and the children were moved to a friend's home that the situation came to light. Social services got involved and the youngsters were placed with their father.

Yet rather than board the next plane home, shamefaced and repentant, Kelly chose to stay away, griping about the cost of changing flights. Instead of saying sorry - and trying to prove her fitness as a mum - she was pictured living it up in Turkish bars. In a magazine, she countered critics by saying: "My kids want for nothing. They come first. I can't believe people are saying that I abandoned them."

Defending her partying - and her lack of contact with her children - she said: "Everyone needs to let their hair down."

When it turned out that shortly before this, Kelly had gone on another break - this time, taking only daughter Shauna - people were even more shocked, with neighbours saying she didn't deserve children. Her defiance finally gave way to shame, and following her arrest at Durham Tees Valley Airport, a sober Kelly said: "I will never leave my babies alone again."

Now after facing charges of child neglect, she could be jailed for her bad behaviour, and might even lose her children for good.

Coming in quick succession, Elaine Walker's case had striking similarities. She too left a child to go to Turkey - although her daughter was 15 - and her story provoked similar disgust. Early reports claimed she hadn't even told daughter Laura that she'd gone (although she later denied this), leaving her with no more means at her disposal than £35.

Elaine, like Kelly, had been to Turkey previously, where she had fallen for a local DJ. Despite him being 20 years her junior, she left her home in Redmire, near Leyburn, North Yorkshire, to join her lover, hotly claiming it as her right. "If I had left a five-year-old girl home alone then, yes, drag me off in handcuffs. But Laura is 15, she can take care of herself," she said.

Yet what will be the consequences for the women's offspring, knowing their mothers have abandoned them?

Dr Joanne Grigor, a chartered clinical psychologist, says the younger children will have suffered great harm. "Children of about one or two are very clingy to mum. The younger the child is, the more need there is for them to know where mum is. If you have been left at that age, it's extremely distressing.

"The 11-month-old and the two-year-old would have been very confused. At that age, there's very little understanding of the verbal information that mum's coming back. The chances are the children would have been crying, saying, 'I want mum.'"

Dr Grigor, who is based at St Nicholas's Hospital, in Newcastle, says the signs of distress would have been clear, with symptoms like bed wetting, nightmares and changes in eating habits, and a possible regression to younger behaviour. She says that common to most abandoned children are feelings of guilt.

"Within the child's psychological make-up there will be questions of, 'What have I done? I must have done something wrong for mum to have left me. Is it my fault? Have I been bad?' If something has gone wrong before the mum left, that would reinforce this."

Dr Grigor says that crucially, the child's perspective on the world is altered. "Children develop with a mental blueprint. That should say: I'm safe, I'm loved, the world is a safe place, other people can be trusted. What you tend to find in children who have been abandoned is that this tends to shift to: the world is not a safe place, other people can't be trusted. The effect of that on a child is pretty devastating."

While with loving care, the damage can be undone, it can be lasting - especially if the harm continues. If Kelly doesn't go to prison, she may keep custody of her children, although she will be under scrutiny. Dr Grigor says that with the right attitude, she could learn to be a better parent. "The child's best place is with a parent if possible, unless they are incapable of providing good enough parenting. Some parents are on the edge but with appropriate input from social services, people like Surestart and voluntary organisations, and provided that they are accepting of all these resources, they can improve."

In Elaine Walker's case, Dr Grigor doubts that action will be taken, as Laura is almost 16. Yet she maintains that the youngster still shouldn't have been left. "Even a mature 15-year-old has got a lot of growing up to do. One day after the child's 16th birthday, it wouldn't have been an issue but I would still argue that leaving a child of 16 could be pretty devastating."

In terms of the degree of harm to Laura, Dr Grigor says it's hard to gauge. "If she had a close relationship with her mum it would be devastating, but if she had virtually brought herself up, it's still not a positive experience by any means but she might not have the same sense of loss," she says.

While most would pale at the idea, Dr Grigor says that for some mothers, child abandonment can seem rational. "I guess in Kelly's instance, what mum says is probably the reality. She's 24, she's probably not lived much and she's a single parent and probably tired and fed up.

"She's probably blaming the children and resenting them. If you start to resent something, it's much easier to leave it behind. Sometimes it will be justified by thinking, 'If I stay here, I'm probably going to go crazy and I might hurt the children, so I'd much better go on holiday.'

"The second mum sounds as if her understanding of childhood is that it ends in your teenage years. Her daughter is 15 and old enough to stand on her own two feet. You've got to ask was this what happened to her?"