Issue - meetings

This report  informs members about children who go missing from care and missing from home. The report updates them on statutory guidance and responsibility, and  further informs them about the local Haringey context and the actions being taken.

 The Committee considered a report about children that go missing from care and missing from home . The Committee gained further understanding about the  statutory guidance  followed by the council when children go missing  and what the council’s responsibilities are .   This was a particular national area of concern especially when it was concerning  vulnerable  children and  children under the age of 11.  Haringey  was part of 3 London boroughs awarded  £300,000 of funding over the next 3 years  through an  externally funded joint project with Aviva (formerly Norwich union), the Railway Children international charity and Barnardos. This was an early intervention project, beginning in November,  aimed at  engaging with and supporting  with children that were likely to go missing from home and reduce the level of harm that they could come to. 

Members of the Committee were provided with some local context  about the children that are reported missing in Haringey.  Usually the primary sources for reporting missing children to the service were the police.   It was noted that  children could be reported for a number of reasons  i.e lateness in  coming  home from school,  children going missing in the shopping centre,  missing from home overnight  or not coming back following  attendance at evening events .  All of these circumstances were recorded by the Children’s service . The Safeguarding service  had  established a triage  system involving a multi agency response to  absences in their  area of responsibility . This was set out in appendix 2 of the report  and used  to assess and measure the level of concern that should be given when they receive a report that a child has gone missing.  Where there was the highest concern it often indicated that there is an improper activity involved which lead to a series of  assessments and  speedy responses.

Section 5.2 of the report detailed the number of children between April and mid September 2011 that  had gone missing. It was noted that 51 children out of 630  LAC   had gone missing from care or had a period of unauthorised absence. The Committee noted that of these 51 children there were two children still missing. Child A  came from an extended Gypsy Roma  family where other members of the family have previously gone missing and returned . At the current time Police were trying to locate this young person. The second young person went missing from care . He was an unaccompanied minor  and UK boarder agencies had been notified as he has previously tried to leave the country.   The Committee noted that when children go missing from a placement the service will try and ascertain whether  there are any issues with the child placement .

Some Members expressed particular concern about LAC that are placed in residential homes  as they seemed to be the highest number  going missing .Officers explained that children that go missing from residential homes  are older teenagers and there will a higher difficulty in dealing with these absences with different levels of engagement  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14