The Protection of Children Standard
This chapter must be read in conjunction with the local Protocol for Children who have Run Away or are Missing from Home and Care.
This chapter explains how staff should deal with children when they go missing. This chapter should be read in conjunction with the local Runaway and Missing from Home and Care Protocol from the local Safeguarding Children Partnership and the responsible authority’s policy in relation to children going missing.
This chapter must be read in conjunction with the Joint Policy for Children Missing.
Safeguarding Children and Young People from Sexual Exploitation Procedure
Child Criminal Exploitation and County Lines Procedure
This chapter was updated in May 2023
The Home ensures that:
There are various different terms which are used in relation to missing children:
Statutory Guidance on Children Who Run Away or Go Missing From Home or Care (January 2014) uses the following definitions:
The police, as the lead agency for investigating and finding missing children, will respond to children and young people going Missing or being Absent based on on-going risk assessments in line with current guidance and the College of Policing definition of missing and absent. The police will prioritise all incidents of missing children as medium or high risk.
The police definitions of 'Missing' and 'Absent' are:
Missing
Anyone whose whereabouts cannot be established and where the circumstances are out of character or the context suggests the person may be subject of crime or at risk of harm to themselves or another'.
and
Absent
A person is not at a place where they are expected or required to be (and there is no apparent risk)'.
The police classification of a person as 'Missing' or 'Absent' will be based on on-going risk assessment. A child whose whereabouts are known would not be treated as either 'Missing' or 'Absent' under the police definitions.
It is important to note that carers or others reporting a child missing to the police should not make the judgement themselves as to whether a child is missing or absent – this decision will be made by the police on the basis of the information provided. A child who is Absent may be at risk for example of child sexual or criminal exploitation, involvement in drugs, gangs, criminal activity, trafficking, forced marriage, female genital mutilation or radicalisation, and Police Risk Assessments should take account of those situations and may need to change the category to Missing.
Where a child is recorded by police as being Absent, the details will be recorded by the police, who will also agree review times and any on-going actions with the Home or other person reporting the absence. All persons recorded by police as Absent are monitored on the police system. Monitoring is ongoing and subject to regular reviews to ensure risk levels do not change. Where information comes to light which introduces any risk to that person, then the case may be re-categorised as 'Missing' and a police investigation started.
One of the overriding principles of 'Absent' is that police are able to focus resources more effectively, in accordance with the police risk assessments of 'Absent' and 'Missing' incidents. A child who is Absent may still be at risk for example of child sexual or criminal exploitation, involvement in drugs, gangs, criminal activity, trafficking, forced marriage, female genital mutilation or radicalisation, and the police risk assessment should reflect this.
The police will prioritise all incidents of Missing children as medium or high risk.
A Missing child incident would be prioritised as 'high risk' where:
The high risk category requires the immediate deployment of police resources. Police guidance makes clear that a member of the senior management team or similar command level must be involved in the examination of initial enquiry lines and approval of appropriate staffing levels. Such cases should lead to the appointment of an Investigating Officer and possibly a Senior Investigating Officer and a Police Search Advisor. There should be a media strategy and / or close contact with outside agencies. Family support should be put in place. The UK Missing Persons Bureau should be notified of the case immediately and local authority children's services should also be notified.
A Missing child incident would be prioritised as 'medium risk' where the risk posed is likely to place the subject in danger or they are a threat to themselves or others. This category requires an active and measured response by police and other agencies in order to trace the missing person and support the person reporting. This will involve a proactive investigation and search in accordance with the circumstances to locate the missing child as soon as possible.
Section 17 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 provides police with powers to enter and search a premises in certain circumstances, notably, with regard to this guidance, for the purposes of saving life and limb or to arrest without warrant a person who has committed an indictable offence or certain other listed offences under the section.
The police can use the powers under Section 46(1) of the Children Act 1989 to remove a child into police protection, for up to 72 hours, if they are likely to suffer significant harm.
Early and effective sharing of information between professionals and local agencies is essential for the identification of patterns of risky behaviour. This may be used to identify areas of concern for an individual child, or to identify 'hotspots' of activity in a local area.
All children must have a Placement Plan which takes account of any likely risk of the child going missing. The Placement Plan should incorporate measures to reduce or prevent the child becoming absent, and information that would help facilitate the location of the child should they go missing. As part of the referral, placement and ongoing planning process, consideration must be given to the risk of the child becoming missing. If there is a risk, a plan must be drawn up to reduce or prevent it. See also Section 5, Specific Risks. If there is a risk that a child may run away or go missing, staff should do their best to help them understand the risks and dangers involved and make them aware of how to seek help if they do run away. The Care Plan and the Placement Plan should include details of the arrangements that will need to be in place to keep the child safe and minimise the risk of the child going missing from the Home.
Where a child already has an established pattern of running away, the Care Plan should include a strategy to keep the child safe and minimising the likelihood of the child running away in the future. This should be discussed and agreed as far as possible with the child and with the Home.
Where a child runs away persistently or engages in other risky behaviours, such as frequently being absent from the Home to meet with inappropriate adults, the registered person, in consultation with the child’s placing authority, should convene a risk management meeting to develop a strategy for managing risks to the young person. The strategy should be agreed with the child’s placing authority, the local authority where the Home is located and the local police.
Where the registered person considers that a child is at serious risk of harm as a result of being persistently missing from the Home, they must contact the local authority to request a review of the child’s Care Plan. Local authorities must give serious consideration to such requests. Where a review does not take place, the Registered Person must escalate this concern under Regulation 5 (engaging with the wider system to ensure children’s needs are met).
When a child is placed out of their local authority area, the responsible authority must make sure that the child has access to the services they need in advance of placement. Notification of the placement must be made to the host authority and other specified services. All children subject of a pre-incident risk assessment should be notified to the local police service. A notification process for missing/absent episodes should be agreed between responsible and host local authorities as a part of the Care Plan and the Placement Plan.
Independent Reviewing Officers (IROs) should be informed by the responsible local authority about missing/ absent episodes and they should address these in statutory reviews. The pre incident risk assessment should be updated after missing incident and should be regularly reviewed.
Where there are Child Protection concerns relating to a child and/or where the child has gone missing from the placement or from any previous placement, the Placement Plan must include information agreed between the placing authority and the Home about the day-to-day arrangements put in place to keep the child safe.
The Home will be proactive in providing an environment which promotes a feeling of security that aims to minimise the likelihood of the child going missing. Staff will work with children to educate them about the risks of going missing, help them where possible to identify trigger points and give them other alternatives in these particular circumstances. The competence and support needs of staff in responding to missing from care issues should be considered as part of their regular appraisal and supervision.
Staff should know when to try to prevent a child or young person leaving the Home and should do so through dialogue, but they should not try to restrain the child should they be intent on leaving, or in any other circumstances, unless it is necessary to prevent injury to the child or others, or serious damage to property.
On a day to day basis, staff should be alert to signs or indications that a child may be likely to run away or become missing. If staff suspect that this may happen, they should take any actions already agreed with the child's social worker, or do what they reasonably and safely can to reduce or prevent the child from leaving - this includes circumstances where a child is refusing to return to the Home.
If there is a serious risk e.g. the child is behaving in a violent manner or threatening to damage property, the Home should contact the police.
The planning process for each child, including the likelihood of them becoming missing, must take account of any specific risk factors for each child. These risk factors include, but are not limited to, the following:
Some looked after children may be unaccompanied asylum seeking children or other migrant children. Some children in this group may have been trafficked into the UK and may remain under the influence of their traffickers even while they are looked after. Trafficked children are at high risk of going missing, with most going missing within one week of becoming looked after and many within 48 hours. Unaccompanied migrant or asylum seeking children, who go missing immediately after becoming looked after, should be treated as children who may be victims of trafficking. Children who have been trafficked may be exploited for sexual purposes and the link to sexual exploitation should be addressed in conjunction with the Safeguarding Children and Young People from Sexual Exploitation Procedure.
The assessment of need to inform the Care Plan will be particularly critical in these circumstances and should be done immediately as the window for intervention is very narrow. The assessment must seek to establish:
The location of the child should not be divulged to any enquirers until their identity and relationship with the child has been established, if necessary with the help of police and immigration services. In these situations the roles and responsibilities of care providers must be fully understood and recorded in the Placement Plan. Proportionate safety measures that keep the child safe should be put in place to safeguard the child from going missing from care or from being re-trafficked.
Grooming is when someone builds an emotional connection with a child to gain their trust for the purposes of sexual abuse or exploitation. Children and young people can be groomed online or in the real world, by a stranger or by someone they know - for example a family member, friend or professional. Groomers may be male or female. They could be any age. Many children and young people don't understand that they have been groomed, or that what has happened is abuse.
Children can be groomed for the purpose of sexual abuse as well as other forms of exploitation including involvement in criminal and extremist activity. Children who are missing are more vulnerable to being groomed and may also go missing as a result of being groomed.
Children and young people can suffer harm when exposed to extremist ideology. This harm can range from a child adopting or complying with extreme views which limit their social interaction and full engagement with their education, to children being groomed for involvement in violent attacks.
Children can by exposed to harmful, extremist ideology in the immediate or extended family, over the internet or through the influence of their peer network.
Going missing is a risk factor in relation to radicalisation:
Professionals should always assess whether a child who has gone missing is at risk of radicalisation.
The sexual exploitation of children involves exploitative situations, contexts and relationships where the young person (or third person/s) receive 'something' (e.g. food, accommodation, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, affection, gifts, money) as a result of them performing, and/or another or others performing on them, sexual activities. Violence, coercion and intimidation are common.
Involvement in exploitative relationships is characterised by the child's or young person's limited availability of choice as a result of their social, economic or emotional vulnerability.
A common feature of CSE is that the child or young person does not recognise the coercive nature of the relationship and does not see themselves as a victim of exploitation.
Going missing is a significant risk factor in relation to sexual exploitation:
Because there is such a strong link between children going missing and risk of sexual exploitation, professionals should always assess whether a child who has gone missing is being sexually exploited or at risk of being sexually exploited.
For more information see Safeguarding Children and Young People from Sexual Exploitation Procedure
Children and young people who go missing from care also need safeguarding against the risk of being drawn into offending behaviour by gangs or criminal groups.
For more information see Child Criminal Exploitation and County Lines Procedure
If a child is missing, if there is an immediate serious risk to the child or others, the police should be called first. This reporting will be in line with the local Philomena protocols. Every child or young person who lives at the Home will have their own Philomena profile, which can be found on each child or young person’s file.
The manager/social worker should decide whether to notify the parent(s) and, if so, who should do so.
All notifications and consultations must be recorded.
When a child does go missing this may constitute a 'Notifiable Event' - see Notification of Serious Events Procedure.
At no time should the Home pass any information to the press. All information should only be shared between the local authority, police and the Home.
If children placed out of their local authority area runs away, this Missing protocol should be followed, in addition to complying with other processes that are specified in the Missing policy of the host local authority. It is possible that the child will return to the area of the responsible authority so it is essential that liaison between the police and professionals in both authorities is well managed and coordinated.
Sometimes a child may be away from their placement without authorisation. While they are not missing, they may still be placing themselves at risk (e.g. they may be at the house of friends where there are concerns about risks of sexual exploitation). The Home or social worker should take reasonable steps to ascertain the wellbeing of the child including, when appropriate, visiting the location. However, if there is a concern the child may be at significant risk of harm to themselves or to others then police should also be notified in order that appropriate safeguarding measures can be taken. This should not be confused with reporting a child missing.
Whenever the whereabouts of a child are not known, preliminary checks should be carried out to see if the child can be located. For example, if a child was supposed to have returned home from school but has not arrived within the normal journey time, checks could include finding out if there are transport delays, phone calls to the child, phone calls to the school to see if the child has been delayed etc. If these initial checks do not succeed in locating the child or there are still concerns that, despite contact being made with the child they are at risk, the individuals and agencies listed below should be informed.
It is clearly important that a deadline is set at the outset of these initial checks so that they don't continue beyond a reasonable timeframe. What timeframe is reasonable should be based on an assessment of the risks relating to the individual child. In some cases, there might be particular reasons to be worried for the child's safety immediately and the agencies detailed below should be contacted straight away – this in conjunction with on-going attempts to contact the child and find out why they aren't where they are supposed to be.
The individuals and agencies who should be contacted when a child is missing or they are away from placement without authorisation:
As a minimum requirement, all reports should include the following information:
The Home/staff should take all reasonable steps, which a good parent would take, to secure the safe and speedy return of the child based on their own knowledge of the child and the information in the child's Placement Plan. If there is suspected risk of harm to the child the carer/s should liaise immediately with the police.
Following initial discussions between the allocated children's social care worker and the police, they should agree an immediate strategy for locating the child and an action plan. This to include a range of actions to locate and ensure the safe return of the child, including:
Within 3 days, a missing from care meeting/ telephone discussion between relevant parties should take place and include the police, the child's social worker and the provider. The action plan and risk assessment should be reviewed and updated.
The Home should take the following steps when a child returns after such an event:
Should there be any suspicion that the absent without consent episode is linked to an abusive incident, the Safeguarding Children and Young People and Referring Safeguarding Concerns Procedure should be invoked.
Arrangements should have been made for Safe and Well checks and Independent Return Review interviews:
Safe and Well Checks
Safe and well checks are carried out by the police as soon as possible after the child has returned. Their purpose is to check for any indications that the child has suffered harm, where and with whom they have been, and to give them an opportunity to disclose any offending by or against them.
Where a child goes missing frequently, it may not be practical for the police to see them every time they return. In these cases a reasonable decision should be taken in agreement between the police and the Home with regard to the frequency of such checks bearing in mind the established link between frequent missing episodes and serious harm, which could include gang involvement, forced marriage, maltreatment or abuse, bullying or sexual exploitation. The assessment of whether a child might run away again should be based on information about:
Independent Return Review
On their return the child must be seen alone by an independent person usually independent of the Home and the placing authority.
An exception maybe where a child has a strong relationship with a member of staff or their social worker and has expressed a preference to talk to them, rather than an independent person, about the reasons they went missing and the Home must work with the placing authority (child's social worker) to create a strategy to keep the child safe in future.
The independent return review is an in-depth interview and should be carried out by an independent professional (e.g. a social worker, teacher, health professional or police officer, not involved in caring for the child and who is trained to carry out these interviews and is able). The child should be seen on their own unless they specifically request to have someone with them. The child should be offered the option of speaking to an independent representative or advocate. The IRO should be informed.
The responsible local authority should ensure the return review interview takes place, working closely with the host authority where appropriate. The independent return interview should take place within 72 hours of the child being located or returning from absence, it should preferably take place in a neutral place where they feel safe. Delays in return interviews may mean a loss of important information or evidence.
The interview and actions that follow from it should:
It is especially important that the independent Return Review interview takes place when a child:
If an independent return home interview is not offered or arranged by the responsible local authority, the Home will challenge this and, if necessary, will take appropriate steps to escalate concerns.
Follow up
The local authority children's social care services, police, Home and other agencies involved with the child should work together to assess the child and:
Where children refuse to engage with the interviewer, parents and/or carers should be offered the opportunity to provide any relevant information and intelligence they may be aware of. This should help to prevent further instances of the child running away and identify early the support needed for them.
Repeat Running Away
If a child continually runs away actions following earlier incidents need reviewing and alternative strategies should be considered.
To reduce repeat running away and improve the longer-term safety of children and young people, the agencies involved may want to provide:
There may be local organisations in the area that can provide repeat runaways with an opportunity to talk about their reasons for running away, and can link runaways with longer-term help if appropriate.
This section applies to children who are 'subject to restriction'. i.e. who have:
Action and Responsibilities when the whereabouts of a Child 'subject to restrictions' is not known
The local authority are responsible for:
The police are responsible for:
The local authority will also notify the Home Office Evidence and Enquiry Unit when a child in their care goes missing or when a missing child returns or is found. The Home Office must maintain regular weekly contact with the local authority and the police until the child is found and record all contact with the police and local authority.
Action when the Child 'subject to restriction' is found
Found by Home Office Staff
The local police and local authority must be informed immediately.
In consultation with the local police and local authority children's social care, a decision will be made as to where the child is to be taken, if they are not to be left at the address where they are encountered. The Home Office must follow up enquires with the local police and children/adult services in order to identify if there are any safeguarding issues.
Found by the police or local authority
Contact the relevant Immigration Compliance and Enforcement Team.
The Manager will arrange to log information on Missing episodes for monitoring purposes. A copy of the report will be retained on the child's file and a copy forwarded to the child's social worker. A copy of the report will also be sent to the Regulatory Authority if applicable (see Notifications of Significant Events Procedure).
The Home will keep records of absence and notify the placing authority. The record will include:
These records will be shared with the placing authority (child's social worker) and where it is appropriate, the parents.
Statutory Guidance on Children who Run Away or Go Missing from Home or Care (DfE, January 2014)
College of Policing Guidance on Missing Persons