1. For each of the last five financial years from 2016/17 up to the current date this request is answered, please provide the number of safeguarding incidents (sometimes logged as a section 47 investigations in England, but logged differently in other nations, and not always so in England) concerning the secure transport of a Looked After Child in the care of the authority? For each incident, please describe the nature of the incident. i.e. alleged physical assault.
Devon County Council does not record this information in a manner that can be easily extracted from our systems. To provide an answer, a member of staff would have to undertake a manual interrogation of each individual child record held.
Under the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 public authorities are not obliged to comply with requests which exceed the cost limit of £450 (equating to 18 hours of time). For this reason, we believe that Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act applies (cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limits).
2. For each of the last five financial years from 2016/17 up to the current date this request is answered, on how many occasions were you informed that a Looked After Child under your care had gone missing or absconded while being collected, transported or delivered (including rest/fuel stops) to a location by a secure transport company?
Please refer to our response to question 1.
3. What is the longest period a child is known to have been missing for after going missing or absconding from secure transport while in the care of the authority? Please state if the child was not found.
Please refer to our response to question 1.
4/ What is the youngest age (in years) of a child who has gone missing or absconded from secure transport while in the care of the authority?
Please refer to our response to question 1