2. Safeguarding Children Missing from School

Acknowledgement

The London Safeguarding Children Board thanks Jo Green (IRSC), the Metropolitan Police Missing Person's Unit and the DCSF for their contributions to this guidance.

This Good Practice Guide is designed to support professionals in education services both within the local authority and in schools and other educational establishments, together with the Metropolitan Police, LA children's social care and health services, in their combined efforts to safeguard children who are missing from school. (Note:This guidance should be read in the context of the statutory duties upon local authorities and parents as set out in the Education Acts 1996 and 2002, the Children Acts 1989 and 2004. In particular the guidance provides for professionals seeking to exercise their duty under Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 and Section 11 of the Children Act 2004 to ensure that their functions are  discharged having regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Additionally, this guidance seeks to ensure that the duty to co-operate to improve the well-being of children under section 10 of the Children Act is discharged).

This guidance addresses particularly the second of the five outcomes set out in the Green Paper Every Child Matters (DfES 2003) - that all agencies and their staff should seek to maximise opportunities and minimise risks to children's well-being in relation to their:

• Physical and mental health and emotional well-being;
• Protection from harm and neglect;
• Education, training and recreation;
• The contribution made by them to society; and
• Social and economic well-being.

The guidance is offered with the aim of providing a minimum standard of safety for children who are registered with London schools and who are or go missing from school, and give rise to concern that they may be classified as missing whereabouts unknown. It provides:

1. A timescale for taking steps to safeguard a child who is missing from school;
2. A description of the steps which can be taken; and
3. A framework for consideration of relevant issues at each stage - with a view to helping practitioners to identify situations where a child is vulnerable to harm, or is being harmed, and in need of a specific safeguarding response.

1.2

Linked guidance and procedures

The principles which should be adopted by all agencies (including Local Authorities who are corporate parents), who are responsible for locating children who go missing from school, include that:

• The safety of the child is paramount
• Parents are the custodians of the welfare and well-being of their children when the children are not in school
• The primary objective is for local (and other) agencies to work together to locate and return the child to a safe environment
• Child protection procedures are triggered where there are any concerns that a child may be at risk of harm or suffering harm
• Agency actions under this guidance will link as appropriate with actions required under related protocols, such as the London Child Protection Procedures
• Services will be put in place to ensure that when a child is found s/he receives the necessary ongoing support to enable her/him to live in a stable, safe environment and attend school

2.2

The London Child Protection Procedures

section 4. Recognition and response and section 5. Children in specific circumstances of the London Child Protection Procedures (London Procedures) provide information which may help staff to recognise and/or manage circumstances in which children who are missing from school may be experiencing harm or be at risk of harm. These include: children subject to fabricated or induced illness or female genital mutilation; abuse by children, domestic violence, missing children and families, sexually exploited children, trafficked children and asylum seeking children. For several of these circumstances there are supplementary, detailed London multi-agency procedures, these, and the London Procedures can be accessed on the London Safeguarding Children Board's website: www.londonscb.gov.uk

Research shows that children Looked After by the local authority are over-represented in the cohort of children who go missing from school.

section 11. Mobile children and families of the London Procedures addresses issues relating to families moving across borough boundaries.

Timescale

Schools and other agencies will always seek to engage parents and carers as partners in ensuring that their children are safe and able to attend school.

In the first four weeks that a child does not attend school, the school and other agencies, will make enquiries and assess the child's circumstances and their vulnerability by following the Process Steps at 3.3 below. In some cases the situation will be resolved between the school and the parent/carer. For other cases the timescale for initiating a multi-agency response will depend on the school's view of the vulnerability of the child.

Concern for a child may be so high that a referral may be made to the police immediately the child is found to be missing. Alternatively, information may emerge over the course of time which raises the level of concern about a child's welfare and a referral should then be made to the police and LA children's social care (the LA education welfare service and/or LA nominated child protection adviser is likely to already be involved by this stage).

The length of time that a child remains out of school could, of itself, be an alerting factor of risk of harm to the child. Accordingly if a situation is not resolved within four weeks, then referrals should be made to the police and LA children's social care, as appropriate.

Extended leave of absence

3.2

Recording actions

3.3

Process steps

Day One

The school identifies that a child is not in school.

A staff member trained to do so, telephones the child's home to seek reasons for the absence and reassurance from a parent/carer (person with Parental Responsibility for the child) that the child is safe at home.

1. There was no answer at the home
2. The person who answered was not the parent/carer and the school is not reassured that the child is at home or safe
3. The parent/carer answered the call, the child is not with them or safe and the parent is concerned
4. The parent/carer answered the call, the child is not with them or safe and the parent is not concerned

In the case of c) the staff member who made the telephone call should advise the parent to:

• Contact all people and places the child is known to talk to and visit to tell them that the child is missing and ask if they can help to find the child, by providing information which may shed light on the child's whereabouts or actively searching for the child
• Contact the family GP and Accident and Emergency Centres near where the child lives and goes to school, in case he/she has sustained an injury and been taken in for medical treatment
• Contact the local police station to inform them that the child is missing

Schools will need to make arrangements for communicating with families who use English as a second language, e.g. schools may liaise with their local LA children's social care services to establish access to interpreters qualified and experienced in working with children and their families.

Assessing a child's vulnerability: immediate response

If the judgement reached on Day One is that there is no reason to believe that the child is at risk of harm, then the school may well delay further action.

See Appendix 1: Extracts from the DfES Good Practice Guide: 'Identifying and Maintaining Contact with Children Missing or at Risk of Going Missing from Education' LEA/0225/2004; providing additional information which practitioners may find helpful.

Police contact and response

• Contact the local police station (24 hour response).
• Explain that you are reporting a child missing.
• Any suspicion/evidence of crime must be clearly stated.
• The circumstances and all available information regarding the child and family will be required. See Appendix 3 - Information Sharing Between Schools and LA Children's Social Care

Step two:

• The missing person report will be risk assessed and the local police response team will carry out immediate actions.
• The investigation will be progressed by the police response team, in conjunction with either the local Missing Persons Unit and/or the CID.

Step three:

• The missing person report will generate a notification to the relevant police CAIT.
• The CAIT work with, and refer information to, LA children's social care.
• LA children's social care, who must be contacted ASAP in these circumstances, will also liaise with the CAIT in order to identify, and act upon, any suspicion of child abuse or child related crime.

Reasonable enquiry

1. The process of 'reasonable enquiry' (Note: The Education (Pupil Registration) Regulations 1995 (S.I. 1995/2089), Regulation 9(1)(c) requires schools and local authorities to make 'reasonable enquiries' to locate pupils who have been absent for 4 weeks or more before they can be deleted from the register.) has not been identified in regulations, however this guidance suggests that it starts with the questions in paragraph 3.3.1 above, and includes school staff checking with all members of staff who child may have had contact with, and with the pupil's friends and their parents, siblings and known relatives at this school and others. School staff should also make telephone calls to any numbers held on record or identified, sending a letter to the last known address, home visits by some school based staff and consultation with local authority staff.
2. If the above is unsuccessful, the school should then contact their local authority. The process of reasonable enquiry will then be conducted, in most cases by the LA education welfare service and should include, assessing a missing child's vulnerability (including revisiting the questions in paragraph 3.3.1 above). The local authority should make enquiries by visiting the child's home and asking for information from the family's neighbours and their local community - as appropriate. The LA education welfare service should also check databases within the local authority, use agreed protocols to check local databases, e.g. LA housing, health and the police; check with agencies known to be involved with the family, with the local authority the child moved from originally, and with any local authority to which the child may have moved.
3. When making enquiries to another local authority in England, staff should telephone first and make contact with the correct person and then ensure that personal information is shared securely (secure messaging is available using s2s), (Note: Local Authorities and schools can send secure messages via School to School (s2s), the electronic transfer system which schools use to transfer pupil records and other educational data securely across local authority boundaries. (See the Teachernet website).
4. Where concern for the child's welfare is high the local authority should also consider obtaining information from the Inland Revenue, Child Benefit Office. (See Appendix 2 - Local Authority Social Services Letter LASSL (2005)3).
5. The DfES has been working with local authorities during 2005 to identify good practice in defining 'reasonable enquiry'. the Department for Children, Schools and Families are hoping to produce a guidance document in the near future, which incorporates this good practice.

Days two to twenty-eight

1. If the judgement on Day One is that there is no reason to believe that the child is at risk of harm, and the school delays further action, the process of reasonable enquiry should be repeated and enhanced, including reviewing the responses to the questions in paragraph 3.3.1 above, for up to four weeks. This should be undertaken jointly between the school and the local LA education welfare service and/or the LA nominated child protection adviser.
2. If the school has enough information to judge that the child is not at risk of harm, however the child has not attended for 10 days and the absence is unauthorised, the LA education welfare service and/or LA nominated child protection adviser should be informed (Note: The Education (Pupil Registration) Regulations 1995 (S.I. 1995/2089), Regulation 13(1) requires all schools to inform their local authority about every pupil who fails to attend regularly or has been absent without reason for at least 10 days continuously. Schools are also required to inform the local authority about every child who has left the school to be educated otherwise (regulation 13(1)). DfES Exclusions guidance (DfES 0345/2004) also requires schools to inform the local authority of pupils who are permanently excluded before that exclusion takes effect).

Child missing from school for more than four weeks

1. If a child continues to be missing from school for four weeks and the local authority has exhausted enquiries and has been unable to locate the pupil and her/his family, under current regulations, it is permissible for the child's name to be removed from the school roll and details of the child up-loaded to the the Department for Children, Schools and Families Lost Pupil Database (Note: Information about the Lost Pupil Database can be found at the Teachernet website).
2. However, if concerns remain in relation to the safety of the child, the LA education welfare service and/or the LA nominated child protection adviser should continue to pursue reasonable enquiries and missing person activity in accordance with local procedures.
3. If the LA education welfare service or any other agency becomes aware the child has moved to another school the service should ensure all relevant agencies are informed so that arrangements can be made to forward records from the previous school.