Missing children epidemic appalling

I WAS appalled by the findings of an astonishing WalesOnline investigation which uncovered an epidemic of looked-after children going missing nationwide.

Almost 1,700 cases of children and young people going missing have been reported since January 2015, including a 15-year-old girl in Cardiff who went missing for nine whole months and (perhaps most distressing of all) the case of an infant who went missing for an entire day in Conwy. Caerphilly Council has admitted that vulnerable teenagers under its care, some as young as 14, were missing for weeks. My heart sank at the thought of those children being at immediate risk of sexual exploitation, or used by organised crime to transport drugs.

Five local authorities have snubbed Freedom of Information requests, meaning perhaps far more than 115 children disappeared between January 2015 and May 2017. One authority confessed it didn’t even keep count of how many children in its care went missing, contrary to stringent child protection guidelines! Local councils, and other public agencies, have a statutory duty of care to looked-after young people as corporate parents, but enormous financial pressures and “top-down reorganisation” have created a dreadful postcode lottery in terms of ensuring the wellbeing of our most vulnerable youth is taken into account. It’ll be too late when a child dies because our public services are too stretched to protect them.

Daniel Pitt Mountain Ash