Revealed: thousands of children in care

disappear each year

FRI DAY 23 MAY 2014
Children in care went missing on 24,000 separate occasions in two ears, Channel 4
!ews can re"eal, incl#ding $a$ies and toddlers% &ome o' societ(s most "#lnera$le
tell #s wh the disappeared%
The figures - drawn together through freedom of information (FoI) requests -
show some of the country's most vulnerable children are disappearing from
residential homes and foster placements, sometimes for hours or days,
sometimes for months and even years
In !orfol" a five-year-old boy was missing for nearly two years, while in
#sse$ a baby girl under one was missing for four months
The data, gathered in a %oint investigation with &pen'orld !ews, shows
that from (anuary )*+) to ,ecember )*+- there were more than ).,***
incidents where children went missing The true e$tent of the problem may
even be much bigger, as many local authorities refused to reveal their data
It is thought the babies who go missing (very much a rarity in terms of the
statistics) are ta"en by parents during care visits /ut by far the biggest
number of missing episodes identified involved children from +* to +01
children li"e 2nnie
Annie(s stor) (All o#r choices are ta*en awa(
2nnie was +- when she ran away from her foster care placement 3laced in
the middle of nowhere, miles away from home, she says she realised that
going missing was dangerous but was so desperate, and didn't feel she had
any other choice
4/ecause all your choices are ta"en away from you, you're not allowed to
ma"e any decisions but actually the one thing I can do is physically move
myself away so I guess it's the one last little bit of control I had left,4 she
told me
+e were trash% +e were ,#st tramps% I' the were interested, the wo#ld
ha"e p#t their 'oot down a long time ago%5laire
'hen 2nnie was eventually found safe and well with a relative, she says all
the focus from social services and the police was about ta"ing her bac" !o
one was as"ing why she had gone missing in the first place
4It was not about what happened while I was missing,4 she said, 4was it
scary, or actually, what caused you to do something so dangerous 'hat
pushed you to that point64
Child e-ploitation
5laire's story is very different yet depressingly familiar at the same time
7he was put into care at her mother's request 5laire had been groomed by
older men from the age of +), and her mother 8anessa simply felt she
couldn't protect her any more /ut once she went into the home, both
admit the problem %ust got worse 8anessa said1 47he was going missing for
not %ust days1 it was wee"s on end4
5laire said she would sleep in the home all day, go out to be pic"ed up by
the men in the evening and return home the ne$t morning 7he says it was
common "nowledge that she was having se$ with many men, who were
much older 7he said social services and the staff %ust didn't care1 4'e were
trash 'e were %ust tramps If they were interested, they would have put
their foot down a long time ago4
9et while both 5laire and her mother are critical of the authorities, they
ac"nowledge that girls in 5laire's situation can be difficult to help In recent
years, as more has become "nown about the lin"s between children going
missing from care and se$ual e$ploitation, there is a renewed focus on
tac"ling the problem
.olice as (ta-i ser"ice(
3rivately the police and those who wor" in care e$press their frustration
&ften it's the same children who go missing repeatedly ,o you put the
police on full scale alert every time6 &r do care home staff e$ercise their
%udgement if children go missing to see the same friends or to visit family
but always come bac"6 'hat happens on the one occasion when those
children don't return from being 4missing4 at the usual time6
3olice have also complained in the past about being used as a sort of 4ta$i
service4 by care homes who send them out to pic" up children who are
missing but not thought to be in any danger
+hat is $eing done/
The government is moving on this It has issued new guidance to care home
staff to ma"e sure that any child who has gone missing is interviewed by
someone independent to establish why they left and what happened while
they were gone They have also brought in new arrangements for collecting
data on this - the accepted view across the board that it is currently
something of a mess - and the new &fsted inspection framewor" will put
much more focus on children who go missing
It is an ac"nowledgement of problems which are not new to the care system
but at least now seem to be being ta"en more seriously1 that children in
care can be profoundly unhappy and very vulnerable, and that running
away is a very obvious sign that something is badly wrong
,ealing with their unhappiness may not always be possible, but "eeping
them safe should be the least the system can do