Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the number of looked after children who were reported missing from their placement by (a) placement type, (b) placement provider, (c) distance from placing authority in the last 5 years for which figures are available.

Information on the number of missing incidents of looked after children in each of the last three years by their placement type has been published in Table G1 of the statistical release ‘Children looked after in England including adoption: 2016 to 2017’ at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2016-to-2017.

Information on the number of missing incidents of looked after children by provider and the distance from the placing authority are provided in the attached table. In 2016/17, missing incidents were reported for 10,700 children, some of whom will have multiple missing incidents.

This information was collected for the first time in 2014-15 and so figures for earlier years are not available.

These statistics are experimental statistics based on data collected for the first time in 2015 and should be treated with caution as local councils’ recording of this information is improving over time. The figures are therefore not comparable between years and any assessment of trends should take this into account. The information provided does not mean that the number of children going missing is increasing in the volumes indicated in the table.

Local councils have improved their reporting of missing incidents through increased collaboration with partner organisations and carers, updated recording systems, and further training for carers to improve understanding of reporting processes.