Lord Laming – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Laming on 2014-06-09.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they intend to take to reduce the number of children and young people who currently disappear from public care.

Lord Nash

It is every Council’s responsibility to provide looked after children with safe, secure care. This includes protecting them from the risks of going missing. New guidance was issued in January 2014 on children who go missing from care. The guidance places a duty on local authorities to offer all children an independent interview when they return from going missing. These interviews can reduce the likelihood of the child going missing again, as well as identify risks to which they may have been exposed whilst missing. We have also now started to collect national data for all children who go missing from care, not just those missing for 24 hours. This data will help build a clearer picture of the extent to which children go missing from local authority care.

The new Ofsted inspection framework has a focus on missing children. To be judged as “good” local authorities will have to show that:

“Comprehensive records are held and shared between agencies to help and protect children and young people. Together they take steps to ensure that all children, including those who are excluded from school, are safe and that for those who are missing or often missing there is a clear plan of urgent action in place to protect them and to reduce the risk of harm or further harm.”

Where Ofsted find poor practice they make specific recommendations to the local authority in their report.