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Why children become runaways
It's 9pm on an ordinary Monday night. If your children are watching television, doing homework or even squabbling over who can use the Playstation, count your blessings. While you're sorting out the bath rota or making hot chocolate, thousands of parents all over the UK are staring into strangely neat bedrooms as still and empty as a mausoleum, at beds that may not have been slept in for weeks or months, at toys and clothes lying untouched.
Their child has run away. He or she might be a son or daughter as young as six or an older child in their teens. Like all parents whose child suddenly disappears, they vacillate between hope and despair as they struggle with the pain of wild imaginings, the interminable mental catalogue of 'what ifs' and 'if onlys' and the roll-call of promises to make things better if only their child comes safely home.
The good news is that probably 90 per cent of all children who go missing are safely home within 48 hours. These children are likely to have had a spat with a sibling or parent, stormed upstairs, hurled a few possessions into a bag, and flung themselves out of the front door shouting 'I'm running away.' Fortunately, they rarely get further than the end of the road, before the need for a hug and the thought of food calls them home.
Far more disturbing are the facts about true runaways. According to The Children's Society, as many as 100,000 children under 16 (one ninth of the age group) run away from home or care every year in the UK - 77,000 of them for the first time. One in 14 child runaways first flees before the age of eight.
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