Please release the following information relating to looked after children in the care of your authority for the periods:
1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021, 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2022, 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023 and 1 January 2024 to 30 April 2024.
1. The total number of looked after children in the care of your authority that are:
a. Identified as having been trafficked or a victim of modern slavery – including, but not limited to those identified through the National Referral Mechanism.
b. Suspected of having been a victim of trafficking or modern slavery, if not included in a.
c. Identified as an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child (UASC) or a separated child.
d. Identified as an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child (UASC) or a separated child who have also been identified or suspected of having been a victim of trafficking or modern slavery.
For question 1a, b and d, we would only hold information for the period January 2023 to April 2024.
Compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. To obtain this information would require a trawl of approximately 250 casefiles and this would take a minimum of 15 minutes per casefile which is 3,750 minutes (62,5 hours) and therefore over the 18 hours of officer time.
Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to the way the data is held, this is not possible for this request.
The answer to 1C is below:
1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021: 24
1 January 2022 to 31 December 2022: 60
1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023: 107
1 January 2024 to 30 April 2024: 88
2. The total number of looked after children in the care of your authority:
a. Identified or suspected as having been trafficked/victim of modern slavery and that have gone missing or absent.
Compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. To obtain this information would require a trawl of approximately 250 casefiles and this would take a minimum of 15 minutes per casefile which is 3,750 minutes (62,5 hours) and therefore over the 18 hours of officer time.
Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to the way the data is held, this is not possible for this request.
b. Identified as an UASC or separated child and that have gone missing or absent.
1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021: 2
1 January 2022 to 31 December 2022: 3
1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023: 15
1 January 2024 to 30 April 2024: 9
c. Identified as an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child (UASC) or a separated child who have also been identified or suspected of having been a victim of trafficking or modern slavery, and that have gone missing or absent.
Compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. To obtain this information would require a review of approximately 279 casefiles and this would take a minimum of 15 minutes per casefile which is 4,185 minutes (69.75 hours) and therefore over the 18 hours of officer time.
Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to the way the data is held, this is not possible for this request.
3. The total number of individual incidents (which could involve the same child on more than one occasion) of looked after children in the care of your authority:
a. Identified or suspected as having been trafficked/victim of modern slavery and that have gone missing or absent.
Compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. We can’t provide the missing episodes for those who may have been trafficked without the manual trawl, so it would have to be manual check of children in care since 2021 and 15 mins per case file, which would be roughly 4000×15 mins = 6000mins = 100hrs.
Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to the way the data is held, this is not possible for this request.
b. Identified as an UASC or separated child and that have gone missing or absent.
1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021: 2
1 January 2022 to 31 December 2022: 6
1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023: 21
1 January 2024 to 30 April 2024: 12
4.The total number of looked after children in the care of your authority that are still missing or absent (including those that subsequently turned 18 without being found) that were identified or suspected as having been trafficked.
Compliance with this request would exceed the appropriate cost limit under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which is £450 or 18 hours of officer time. To obtain this information would require a review of approximately 4041 casefiles and this would take a minimum of 15 minutes per casefile which is 6,615 minutes (110.25 hours) and therefore over the 18 hours of officer time.
Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to the way the data is held, this is not possible for this request.
5. The total number of looked after children in the care of your authority that are still missing or absent (including those that subsequently turned 18 without being found) that were identified as an UASC or separated child.
1 January 2021 to 31 December 2021: 0
1 January 2022 to 31 December 2022: 0
1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023: 0
1 January 2024 to 30 April 2024: 0
6. For questions 1a, 1b and 2a please provide a breakdown of these numbers by year and whether the child is British or non-British.
Please refer to questions 1a, 1b and 2a.
7. For question 2, please provide a breakdown of these numbers by type of accommodation missing from.
We only have an answer here in relation to question 2b, please see response to question 2a and 2c as to why.
| Year | Children’s Home | Fostering | Other Arrangement | Semi Independent Accommodation | Grand Total |
| 2021 | 1 | 1 | 2 | ||
| 2022 | 6 | 6 | |||
| 2023 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 14 | 21 |
| 2024 | 4 | 8 | 12 |
Please note, accommodation is based on the number of episodes of missing, not the number of people. One UASC may have lived in multiple types of accommodation across the several times they have gone missing. If one child has been missing 3 times from 3 different accommodations then we have to return one accommodation type per missing episode per child.