REACH team set up to reduce number of young runaways
Children who go missing from their homes are the focus of a new team in Plymouth who will work with parents and their children to reduce the number of runaways.
Plymouth City Council has teamed up with the police to create the REACH team (Reducing Exploitation and Absence from Care and Home) in an effort to reduce the number of young people reported missing and prevent the sexual exploitation of young runaways.
The team is made up of professional youth workers, a social worker and police officer, and is dedicated to working with young people who have already run away from home or care and are likely to go missing again, or those who are at risk of running away.
The new set up means as soon as the police receive a young missing person report, the REACH team is alerted, which enables youth workers, often out and about in the community, to keep an eye-open for the missing young person, as well as the police.
Likewise, the team is informed when a young person is found and a visit to the family is triggered so REACH staff can step-in to help understand any issues and arrange the necessary support services.
Elaine Shotton, service manager in the Council’s Targeted Youth Service, said: “We are a team dedicated to reducing the number of young people running away from care or home. Our ultimate aim is to stop young people from going missing in the first place, but it is also to educate parents about what to do if their child does run away. We work with young people to help them find different ways to cope with problems, rather than running away from them and we try to educate them about the potential dangers.”
Staff from the REACH team visit homes to talk to parents and advise them of some of the practical ways they can help the police to find their child. Youth workers meet young people to talk to them about the support on offer and find out the reasons why they ran away and how that could be avoided in the future.
Detective Chief Inspector, Charlie Pitman, offers advice to parents. He said: “There are some really important things parents can do to help us find their children quickly. Practical tasks such as: writing down what they can remember about the clothes their child was wearing and a list of their friends, checking to see what items they may have taken with them and whether they have access to money. All this information helps us act quickly to find a young person.”
Since it began in April this year, the REACH team has been involved with 261 cases in the six months until September 2013. This involved 185 cases where young people went missing from the family home and 76 cases where young people went missing from care.
Councillor Nicky Williams, Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, said: “One of our aims as a city is to act sooner to try to prevent issues before they escalate into crisis, so whilst young people running away from home is not new, we’ve improved the way we manage the situations. This joint team between the youth service, children’s social care and the police puts into practice our cooperative values, whereby we pool resources and expertise for the benefit of young people. Early results are very promising and show we are making a real difference to families’ lives.”
The team is jointly funded by Plymouth City Council and the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, with additional funding from the Police and Crime Commissioner.
The REACH team has a 24/7 hotline, provided through a contract with national organisation Missing People, so any parent concerned their child has or may run away can call 0800 953 0053.
