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Respect for Animals
6.3 pm
Judy Mallaber (Amber Valley) (Lab): I rise to present the petition of Respect for Animals, a seal protection organisation, and UK citizens opposed to the brutal slaughter of seal pups by Canada. The petition is signed by J. MacManus and more than 31,000 other citizens, and will be followed by further petitions. It is dedicated today to Tony Banks, whose memorial has just taken place in the Robing Room.
That the slaughter of nearly 1 million seals, almost all under three months of age, over the last three years by Canada is a cruel outrage. The Petitioners further declare that they are appalled by the cruelty of the hunt. They note that a team of independent veterinarians who observed the Canadian seal hunt in 2001 found that 42 per cent. of the seals examined were likely conscious when skinned; are concerned that the current level of killing is unsustainable for the harp seal population; and that trade data shows that thousands of seal skins were imported into the UK between 1995 and 2003. The Petitioners further declare that the US banned imports of all seal products in 1972 and that Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy currently have initiatives to ban such trade.
The Petitioners therefore request that as a matter of urgency the House of Commons pass legislation to prohibit the import of all seal products into the UK.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
Runaway Children
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Mr. Michael Foster.]
6.5 pm
Helen Southworth (Warrington, South) (Lab): I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of protection for children who run away or go missing from home or care, especially as I have a ten-minute Bill, supported by many Members, which has not yet secured time for a Second Reading.
The Children’s Society, the National Missing Persons Helpline, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, ChildLine, Parents And Children Together, Railway Children, local charities such as Talk Don’t Walk in my constituency, the children’s lead of the Association of Directors of Social Services and missing persons lead of the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Metropolitan police and the Police National Missing Persons Bureau have all contributed to the Bill’s preparation. The Bill’s main purpose is to establish a simple co-ordinating mechanism to identify and implement best practice, monitor what is happening and make sure that it works. In particular, the Bill would place a duty on the Secretary of State to promote the establishment of a national strategy, safeguard runaway and missing children and provide for the collection and reporting of information about runaway and missing children. It is not about creating a bureaucracy; it is about putting someone in charge and making someone responsible.
What is the current position? Research by the Children’s Society indicates that an estimated 77,000 children and young people under the age of 16 run away for the first time every year. It also states that there are around 129,000 incidents of children running away overnight every year.
Who are the children who run away? Anecdotal evidence suggests a range of circumstances in which children and young people choose to leave home or care. I have been given evidence about very vulnerable children out on their own with no one to help them. In the House, we do not know the nature of the problem or have the information. I asked how many children on the child protection register from each local authority area have been reported missing to the police, and received the reply that the information is not collected centrally. I asked how many children in local authority care were reported missing from care to the police in each local authority area, but the information is not collected centrally. I asked which local authority children’s services have agreed joint protocols with their police authorities for the management of cases of children reported missing from home or care. Again, the information is not collected centrally.
The “Every Child Matters: Change for Children” programme, is making a huge impact on the well-being of children in local communities. We must have a mechanism, however, to ensure that children who run away or go missing, and who have nowhere safe to go, have help that meets their needs where they are. Protection and services for young runaways must become a priority. Those children can become invisible, and we must not let that happen.
The police have given me anonymous case histories, and I shall share just a few with the House to describe how hard life can be for some of our children. One is of a young boy living with his mother, stepfather and two older children. At home, his parents, who were heavy drinkers, neglected him, and his sisters bullied him. He was also the victim of bullying at school. He was frequently reported missing to the police, spending nights at the homes of his friends, riding buses or sleeping rough, often with other children who had run away. On two occasions, he presented himself to the local police station, saying that he did not want to go home. Eventually, he was placed in care in October 2003, when he was 13 years old. He has continued to go missing from his care placement, and 220 missing-person reports were recorded between October 2003 and June 2006. While missing, he has been a victim of crime on five separate occasions.
In 1996, aged six, a young girl first came to the notice of police when her teacher discovered that her mother had assaulted her. During 2002 and 2003, aged 12 and 13, she was reported missing on numerous occasions, and 20 separate incidents were reported on police intelligence records. While missing, she was having relationships with older men who were exploiting her. On one occasion she was interviewed by police, and stated that she was having unprotected sex with her boyfriend with the intention of becoming pregnant. He was 25. She also stated that her boyfriend encouraged her to have sex with other men, in return for which she received favours such as alcohol, cigarettes or money. She was 12 years old at the time.
The girl was placed in care, but continued to be reported missing on a regular basis. Her foster carer reported to police on one occasion that she was claiming to be carrying drugs from one place to another for dealers. On one occasion, she was found in the flat of a 45-year-old man to whom she was not related; also sleeping in the flat was a known prostitute. The girl was placed in a care home in another county, but has continued to be reported missing from there. Between August 2002 and September 2005, between the ages of 12 and 15, she made 12 allegations of serious crimes, including very serious crimes against the person.
Another child first ran away from home at the age of 13. She was missing for five days, and it transpired that she had spent most of that time sleeping rough, sometimes in telephone boxes. She disclosed to the police that the reason for her running away had been sexual abuse by her mother’s partner. She was placed in a local care home by social services as a temporary measure while police dealt with the allegation. She provided credible evidence of continuing sexual abuse, which had begun when she was 11 years old. Because she was aware of the strength of her mother’s feelings for her partner, she never told her mother. Her mother’s partner denied the allegations, and her mother refused to accept her daughter’s word or to support her. It was decided that she should be placed with a foster carer. Unfortunately, that was in another county. She next came to notice in October 2005, by which time she had been placed with a different foster carer in yet another county. She had run away from foster care, and was found in London. It transpired that she had been engaged in prostitution while she was missing.
Another child, 11 years old, is on the child protection register as a result of violence in the family home. His father is an alcoholic, and his mother has a drug problem. The parents are together intermittently, and the child has been caught in the middle of a volatile and violent situation for a number of years. He was placed in foster care. He is described as shy and introverted. He remained at school, but his foster carer lived outside the borough, so he had to make the long journey to school in a taxi every day. He is frightened of the dark.
The child ran away from foster care, taking all his belongings. He was found the next day back with his parents, but because of the situation to which he had returned, he was taken into police protection and was debriefed by the police. He explained that he was frightened all the time, especially when coming home from school, and that he had been bullied at the foster carer’s house. Apparently two older teenage boys were also in care at the address. They had been bullying him. He had been locking himself in his room each night, and going to school in the morning without any human contact as such. He was taken by social services back to the foster carer’s house, but he promptly ran away again within an hour. He was found very quickly wandering nearby, and has now been placed in alternative care.
Those are far from isolated cases. Although some young people find that running away can provide a relief from pressure, a large minority find themselves lonely, hungry and frightened. Children on the run are at high risk of abuse, and face both immediate and long-term dangers.
Across the country, I have encountered some exceptional individuals and statutory and voluntary organisations. They are working incredibly hard to put things right. An example is the “mountains into molehills” project organised by Lancashire constabulary, who work with all the other key local stakeholders to establish effective advanced problem-solving measures. It is a beacon of best practice. The computerised missing persons case management system allows analysis of missing persons data, which make it possible for problem solving to intervene at an early stage. Lancashire found that of 6,200 missing persons investigations undertaken annually, more than 4,800 involved children under 18. Lancashire tracked children who had been missing more than twice and found 300 children who accounted for almost 3,200 of the missing persons investigations. The majority of those cases involved children in care. One had been the subject of 78 missing persons investigations in a single year.
Following Lancashire’s example, Leicester constabulary has recently carried out work with its key local partners, which revealed that of the 4,241 reports to the police of missing persons, 6 per cent. were reports about the same 10 young people. All were in local authority care, all were reported missing more than 10 times, and one individual had been reported missing more than 53 times during the year.
It is
significant that in the Met police, Lancashire and Leicestershire, very
senior police officers, and people at director level in other
stakeholder organisations, are taking a lead role. Someone is taking
responsibility at the top of the organisations to get action. A common
thread identifies a particularly vulnerable group of “cross
border” children with serious social, domestic and behavioural
difficulties. They are placed by the local authorities responsible for
their care into private care homes in different areas of the country.
For a minority of children who need to be placed away from home to
protect them from particular circumstances, such placements are
appropriate. All too often, however, children are placed
inappropriately, without sufficient support and without liaison with
local services.
For children running away from local authority care, the current system is failing to meet their most basic needs—a safe place to stay and someone safe to talk to. Children’s services, police, the voluntary sector and health services have vital roles to play in ensuring that runaways are known about, found and their problems appropriately addressed. Making sure that the agencies know how to work together effectively is a key dynamic of the “Every Child Matters: Change for Children” reforms. The need for co-ordinated action was also a central feature of the recommendations made by the social exclusion unit in 2002, and the accompanying guidance issued by the Department of Health. But the co-ordinated action, backed up by effective information collection and sharing, clear strategies and leadership, is not happening everywhere.
In October 2003, the Children’s Society conducted a survey to see how local authorities were getting on with protocols and services for runaways. Some 91 of 150 local authorities replied, of which just under half had developed protocols for runaways. Only seven authorities could say that they had implemented all three of the recommendations. In 2005, a new survey showed that 89 local authorities have all recommendations in place, and a further 25 have committed to fulfilling the recommendations. That is too slow and piecemeal, and is letting vulnerable children down. Children are still running away from danger into danger, which is why we must have national leadership and national accountability to ensure that things happen.
National voluntary organisations such as the Children’s Society, the National Missing Persons Helpline, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and Childline have been seeing the problems and taking action for years, providing places of refuge and someone to talk to. Local projects such as Talk Don’t Walk in my constituency are having a real impact, but their funding is uncertain—even though for some children they are the only place the child trusts enough to turn to for help, like the 12-year-old boy who came to a refuge run by a charity, alleging physical abuse and that his dad locked him up at home. The refuge contacted children’s services, who returned the boy home with social work support. A month later, he turned up barefooted at the refuge with a fractured arm, saying that his Dad had hit him, taken his shoes away and locked him up. He escaped and could only think of the refuge as a safe place to go. He has since been accommodated and remains accommodated.
The
National Missing Persons Helpline set up a runaways helpline two years
ago that took 57,000 calls last year—funded by the charity. It
is an essential
service for children such as the 12-year-old who ran away from home
after an argument with her mum’s new boyfriend. She did not know
where to turn. There were two younger children at home and the mum did
not realise that her daughter was missing. The runaways helpline
connected her to a duty social worker for the first
time.
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