Missing children: the reality

Family problems, ranging from arguments over tidying a room to physical or sexual abuse, are one of the main causes of children running away, says the government's Social Exclusion Unit.

The dangers
The longer a child is missing, the harder the task of finding them becomes. 'If a child is missing for more than 24 hours, the chances of them being found decrease significantly,' says Chief Inspector Bonnett. 'In terms of children that are missing for an extended period, the recovery time is not very good, particularly with teenagers who have made a conscious choice to go missing.

'Studies show they are likely to become involved in crime because they have to sustain themselves. That can have a long-term effect on their future. One of the key problems for both boys and girls is that they are very vulnerable to sexual exploitation or manipulation by people with drugs.'

Children's Society spokeswoman Rachel Petty says that 13 per cent of child runaways who sleep rough are physically attacked, while eight per cent are sexually assaulted. Runaways are five times more likely to end up with drug problems and three times more likely to get into trouble with the police than they would otherwise have been.