Kids In Care

There was a news story today that made me furious; which states that police are no longer prioritising searches for children who go missing from children's homes.  I have been working for some time now as a care worker in children's homes around Hereford and Worcester and only this week at a home I where I was doing a late shift, a fifteen-year-old girl ran off, and was later found by police with an older man in a hotel in Birmingham.  If she hadn't been found heaven knows what might have happened as this particular girl has a history of being exploited, particularly by an Asian gang of seven men, who it is believed are still at large; it's a sad fact that kids like this can fall into the hands of potential abusers very quickly.  Once again it's the poor and dispossessed who are paying the price for austerity cut backs - the bed tax is appalling enough, but this is surely one step too far.  The kids I work with sometimes present difficult and challenging behaviour, but this is because they are vulnerable and need our protection; it's not their fault they're in care; in most cases it's because of their parents, so why should they be treated like they're a problem?  But in future the definition of 'missing people' will be changed to 'absent' or missing after a risk assessment has been carried out, so police do not have to respond to every call out.  I am passionate about my work with these kids, and the carers who have been doing it a lot longer than me are to my eyes saints; they take abuse both physical and verbal from them and still battle for the souls of these neglected and abandoned young people.  We need every law at our disposal to help them, but now a vital service is being limited and I think the consequences could be disastrous.  The girl who ran away later asked me if anyone really cared that she had gone.  I assured her we all did; I had driven to the local station train station and had searched around town myself.  However it seems to me with this new definition of missing persons, that their safety isn't such big a priority any more as far as our government are concerned.  Whoever came up with this proposal - shame on your head.