FOI Request - Children in Care Missing

Request 101003819292

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am requesting the following information regarding children in the care of your local authority.
1. For each of the last five calendar years (2020–2024), please provide:
a) The number of children in care (Looked After Children) reported missing.
b) Of those, the please provide the number who received a statutory return home interview.
c) The total number of individual missing incidents involving children in care.
d) The number of children who went missing more than 10 times in a single year.
e) The average length of time these children were missing before being located.
 

2. Of the missing children:
a) How many were placed in unregulated or semi-independent accommodation?
b) How many were placed out of area (i.e. outside the boundary of your local authority)?
c) How many remain unaccounted for / are still classified as missing as of today?
 

3. For the five-year period:
a) Please provide any serious incident notifications or referrals made to the Department for Education or Ofsted regarding missing children in care.
b) If held, please provide any anonymised risk assessments or internal reviews following cases where children in care went missing for more than 7 days.

Response 04-08-2025

1. & 2. This information is not recorded; any information about Looked After Children (LAC) missing would be contained in their files. We would have to search through each of the files individually. At currently 165 LAC, for five years, giving an estimated 5 minutes per case, this would take us to more than 40 hours. This task would cost the Council in excess of £600 of staff time. In accordance with section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (excessive cost), we are therefore unable to comply with this part of the request.

3. Not held. Information that is not held falls under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - Information not held.