VERY Alarming news from the NSPCC - how many are there? Who will put this RIGHT?! Time to pool resources NOW

Children missing from care:

(NSPCC to me) ''Unfortunately it is not known for certain how many looked after children go missing. Data is gathered by the police and by the Department for Education but there are discrepancies between the two sources.

A Parliamentary Inquiry in 2012 noted that it was impossible to know the true extent of the problem (in England) due to erratic data collection. The Department for Education (DfE) recorded 930 instances of children going missing from care, but police data shows an estimated 10,000. There are various possible reasons for this discrepancy. Local authorities only have to report on children for whom they have parental responsibility, so this does not include children placed in their area from another authority. The DfE statistics only record children who went missing for more than 24 hours.

You can read more in our briefing about the Inquiry findings here: http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/briefings/missing-from-care_wda91122.html
The full Inquiry report can be accessed here: http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/tcs/u32/joint_appg_inquiry_-_report...pdf


NSPCC research: The NSPCC sent a Freedom of Information request to police forces in England and Wales in 2013 to find out how cases of children missing from local authority care were reported to them.

“A Freedom of Information request from the NSPCC revealed that last year police received, on average, more than 75 reports a day involving nearly 7,900 youngsters, many of who were aged 13-17, although some were as young as six. At least 2959 of the children went missing more than once with some absconding on 35 occasions. Some weren't seen for more than a week and one force reported that six had still not been found.

However this is still believed to be a drastic under-estimate of the scale of the problem as it is thought less than half of all cases are reported to police and only 29 of the forces responded in full to the FOI.

Latest figures from the Department for Education put the number of children who went missing from care at under 1000 - a vast difference to that supplied by police.”
Number of children missing from care incidents reported to police = 28,123
Number of children missing = 7,885
Number of children who went missing more than once = 2959
Number of 13-17-year-olds reported missing = 3297.

Read more about these figures in our press release from 2013: http://www.nspcc.org.uk/news-and-views/media-centre/press-releases/2013/children-missing-from-care/children-going-missing-from-care_wdn95720.html

You may also be interested in this NSPCC research report on children missing from care: http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/resourcesforprofessionals/lookedafterchildren/missing-from-care-report_wdf93502.pdf
Ofsted also produced a report on children missing from care in 2013: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/sites/default/files/documents/surveys-and-good-practice/m/Missing%20children.pdf


Suicides and deaths amongst looked after children:

We are not aware that the Government publish a statistic for the number of children who die whilst in local authority care.

Suicides: a 2012 Government report estimated that “Looked After Children and care leavers are between four and five times more likely to attempt suicide in adulthood”
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/216853/CYP-Mental-Health.pdf

Serious case reviews may give an indication of the number of deaths (including those by suicide) for children in local authority care. Case reviews are listed in our library catalogue. However, there may be circumstances in which a case review is not released into the public domain and our case review repository is not comprehensive, particularly for older reports. Please have a look at our case review web page for further information: http://www.nspcc.org.uk/casereviews

Our library catalogue can be searched at: http://www.nspcc.org.uk/inform/NSPCCLibraryOnline.asp In the Advanced search you can limit your search to “case reviews” by the Media type. The following keywords will be of use to find reviews about child deaths amongst children in care: “infant deaths”, “child deaths’, suicide, “children in care”. If you wish us to carry out a search of serious case reviews for you, please let us know.


The most recent biennial analysis of serious case reviews for England doesn't have a figure for the number of serious case reviews involving looked after children, although it does have one for the number of children who were not living at home at the time of the incident. This includes cases when children were in hospital or mother and baby units so is not directly comparable with earlier figures:

An analysis of serious case reviews in England from 2009-11 show that 13% of incidents took place whilst the child was not living at home or with relatives. (NB: this figure includes deaths as well as serious injury/harm).
Source: Brandon, Marian, Sidebotham, Peter, Bailey, Sue and Belderson, Pippa, Hawley, Carol, Ellis, Catherine and Megson, Matthew (2012) New learning from serious case reviews: a two year report for 2009-2011. London: Department for Education (DFE). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-learning-from-serious-case-reviews-a-2-year-report-for-2009-to-2011

An analysis of serious case reviews in England showed that 10% (2003-05) and 13% (2005-07) related to a child in care. (NB: this figure includes deaths as well as serious injury/harm).
Sources: Brandon, Marian, Bailey, Sue and Belderson, Pippa (2010) Building on the learning from serious case reviews: a two-year analysis of child protection database notifications 2007-2009 (PDF) . London: Department of Education: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/181651/DFE-RR040.pdf
Brandon, Marian, Bailey, Sue, Belderson, Pippa, Gardner, Ruth, Sidebotham, Peter, Dodsworth, Jane, Warren, Catherine and Black, Jane (2009) Understanding serious case reviews and their impact: a biennial analysis of serious case reviews 2005-2007 (PDF) . [London]: Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF): https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/222122/DCSF-RR129_R_.pdf


[snopped] '...Our factsheet on child killings may also be of interest in explaining what we do know more generally from the data on child deaths: http://www.nspcc.org.uk/Inform/research/briefings/child_killings_in_england_and_wales_wda67213.html

The latest Department for Education statistics on the outcomes of children looked after by local authorities can be found here (although as mentioned, this does not include information on deaths): https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/outcomes-for-children-looked-after-by-las-in-englandhttps://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/outcomes-for-children-looked-after-by-las-in-england


You may wish to make a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department for Education to see if the data you require is gathered centrally. If not, then you would probably need to contact each of the Local Safeguarding Children Boards in England and ask them.


I do hope this information is of use to you. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have further queries.

Kind regards

Duty Librarian
NSPCC Information Service ''