Safeguarding Runaway and Missing Children

Points of Order – in the House of Commons at 1:31 pm on 17 January 2007.

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Photo of Helen Southworth Helen Southworth Labour, Warrington South 1:31, 17 January 2007

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to establish a national strategy to safeguard runaway and missing children;
to make provision for the collection and reporting of information about runaway and missing children and for related co-ordination between local authorities and other bodies;
and for connected purposes.

In November 2005, the House gave consent to publish a Bill to protect runaway and missing children. The Bill was published last year with support from the National Missing Persons Helpline, the Children's Society, Parents and Abducted Children Together, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Crisis, the chair of children's services for the Association of Directors of Social Services, the lead officer for runaways from the Association of Chief Police Officers, and many hon. Members. That Bill's purpose was also to place a duty on the Secretary of State to safeguard children.

It does not seem too much to ask that vulnerable children are identified so that they can be helped, that information is collected when a child is reported missing to the police, and that there is effective co-ordination to ensure that such children receive help. However, the House did not find time to give the Bill a Second Reading. Safeguarding vulnerable children is, however, the core business of Government. It is our responsibility and we cannot ignore it. We need the Bill.

The Home Office and the Department for Education and Skills do not even know how many children have gone missing over the past 12 months. A large number of local authority children's services—the bodies responsible under "Every Child Matters" for safeguarding young runaways—do not know how many children in their own area were reported missing to the police in 2005. Of the 120 authorities that responded to my recent request for information, 71 did not know the statistic for their area, 23 could not say how many of their looked-after children—children for whom they were directly responsible—were reported missing to the police in 2005, and 42 did not know how many children on their child protection register had been reported missing to the police.

Police forces have been making progress during the past 12 months, but fewer than half are currently using the computerised systems designed to make recording and management of reports effective. Research by the Children's Society indicates that around 100,000 children go missing each year. Those estimates are corroborated by research for the Government's social exclusion unit review of young runaways in 2002 and by statistics from the Metropolitan police.

That means that, on average, every five minutes of every day a child goes missing in the UK. Most get home safely and are cared for and cherished, but many do not. They are running from danger into danger. Those children must have someone to turn to and somewhere safe to go. It is our responsibility to make that happen. Today there are only 10 places available in refuges run by charities for children who have run away. National and local charities are the main providers of emergency help.

The National Missing Persons Helpline has set up a dedicated runaways helpline, totally funded by voluntary donations and grants, which took 57,000 calls in 2005—calls like one from an 11-year-old girl who phoned in the early hours of the morning, asking for help because her mother had kicked her out of the house. She agreed to speak to social services, but hung up. She phoned again a few days later at 10 pm and asked for contact with social services, which was arranged by the helpline.

Almost a month later the girl rang again late at night, saying that her mum had thrown her out again. Social services advised her to go home, but she said she would rather stay on the streets than go back. The helpline night worker was able to persuade her to talk to the police, who picked her up at 1 am, very cold and scared. This little girl is 11 years old and has special needs. Without the helpline, she would have been out on the streets on her own through several nights.

The London Refuge provides emergency accommodation and specialist support for children who have run away. Among the children whom it has helped in the past 12 months was a 14-year-old girl referred to the refuge by the police. She ran away because she was being hit by her mother. She disclosed physical abuse over a sustained period of time. She said that her mother had burned her with an iron, and showed the staff a serious scar on her stomach. She had special educational needs and attended a school for children with special needs. She had run away several times before.

The refuge made a child protection referral, arranged for an advocate and contacted a solicitor on the girl's behalf at her request. She said she would not go home because she was too scared. Her solicitor attended the administrative division of the High Court on her behalf. The court ordered that she should be accommodated by the local authority, pending assessment and investigation. She was placed in foster care that day. The refuge does not have funding to continue its work beyond this financial year.

Those children found someone to help them, but thousands of other children do not, and we do not even know how many of them are out there on their own. According to the Children's Society research, many young people sleep rough, stay with someone they have just met, or employ strategies such as begging or stealing to survive. There are serious risks to children surviving in this way. More than 8 per cent. had been hurt or harmed on the most recent occasion that they had run away. Children who were away for more than a week were twice as likely to have been hurt or harmed. The surveys indicate that over 20,000 children are missing for a week or more each year.

The police have given me some anonymous case studies, and they are heartbreakers. A 14-year-old boy with a deteriorating sight condition that means he is partially sighted was being abused by his mother and so was put on the child protection register, then placed in a care home. He ran away from the home 23 times between the end of October 2005 and the end of January 2006. On the last occasion that he went missing, he was robbed and assaulted.

Other cases—some were far worse—depict time and again vulnerable children, including children in local authority care, children with special needs and children with mental health problems, persistently running away and being exploited by predatory adults, getting trapped into drug abuse, drug dealing, sexual exploitation and prostitution. One 15-year-old, born HIV-positive and in local authority care, was reported missing 120 times. A 16-year-old girl in care went missing 111 times.

Yet Lancashire police, working with children's services and charities, have demonstrated that good information, appropriately shared, interviews with children and action to tackle their problems radically reduces the number of runaways, and in addition gives police the information that they need to prosecute abusers. The problem can be solved only by effective joint working. Because children who run away cross administrative boundaries, that co-operation must extend beyond the local area.

If we want to buy a book or a piece of music, five minutes on the internet will find it for us. We can pay our road tax online or contact friends whom we have not seen for years. Information is available to us at the press of a button. The Bill will require police and Government bodies to use technology to record when a child goes missing. Local authorities will know that a child in their care has run away before that happens 120 times, and will be able to identify and tackle problems in their care homes. The Bill will also require agencies to work together so that police officers do not return a vulnerable child to its abusers, predatory adults are not left free to pick up children off the street, and charities can access statutory support when a scared and vulnerable child makes contact in the middle of the night.

One does not need to be a philanthropist to back speedy action, just someone who will not put up with waste. It costs £1,000 in police time to investigate a missing person. The young boy with impaired sight whom I mentioned earlier, who was abused at home and ran away from care 23 times, cost £23,000 of police time in those three months. How much better that money could have been spent. How much does it cost to keep someone in a young offenders institute? Ninety-four per cent. of the inmates at Thorn Cross YOI in my constituency said that they had been runaways before becoming involved in crime. Early intervention can save children and save money.

In short, a child is running away every five minutes. More than 100,000 will have run away in the past 12 months. Some of them will have been running from serious abuse. About 8,000 of them will have been hurt or harmed while they were away from home—some very seriously hurt. We do not know how many were murdered. Information technology and communications are now so advanced that a single telephone call from a child anywhere in the country, day or night, should give them access to safety and help. It is our job to make this happen, and it is about time that we did.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Helen Southworth, Ann Coffey, Dan Norris, John Battle, Mr. Barry Sheerman, Mr. Kevin Barron, Mr. John Denham, Ann Keen, Ms Dari Taylor, Jane Kennedy, Mr. Stewart Jackson and Mr. Paul Burstow.