Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to provide help to missing children.

In January 2014 the Department for Education published revised statutory guidance on children missing from home or care.[1] This sets out the steps that local authorities and their partners should take to prevent children going missing and to protect them when they do. The guidance is clear that within seventy hours of a missing child being found, the council should offer them an independent return interview to uncover information that will help protect children from:

1. The risk of going missing again.
2. The risks they may have been exposed to while missing.
3. The risk factors in their home.

[1] www.gov.uk/government/publications/children-who-run-away-or-go-missing-from-home-or-care