The head of Ofsted has warned that the law dealing with children who run away from care is “routinely” ignored by social workers and care home staff, who paint the runaways as delinquents rather than victims.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, chief inspector of the education watchdog, said the authorities had failed to learn the lessons from the “shocking” cases in Rochdale and Rotherham and said that there is still “little or no” reliable information even on how many children are running away, let alone where they go or why.
Sir Michael’s comments come in a highly critical report on the state of child safeguarding arrangements in the wake of the Rochdale scandal and he has called for the Government to take “urgent action” to set up a national register to accurately track the number of children who go missing and learn lessons from their cases.
Following the case, in which nine men were jailed for grooming under-age girls, Ofsted looked at 105 cases of children who had gone missing either from care or their families to see what actions had been taken.
They found that in all but a small minority of cases there was no evidence of statutory guidance being followed and a “general lack of compliance” with agreed procedures.
So-called “safe and well” checks on returning runaways, required by law, are rarely being offered and when they are the information is not always passed on, the report found.
The report concluded that there was a lack of evidence in nearly all the local authorities visited of the safe and well checks being undertaken regularly and little evidence that the outcomes and content of those checks that were done were being shared with relevant professionals. This meant that the checks rarely informed case planning.