We now move to the first of the short debates this afternoon. If you're leaving the Chamber, please do so quietly and quickly. If you're leaving the Chamber, please do so. If not, please sit down. I now move to the short debate and I call on Llyr Gruffydd to speak on the topic he has chosen. Llyr.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. I'm grateful for the opportunity to discuss today an issue that needs to be addressed urgently, in my view, that being the safeguarding response to children who go missing or who are at risk of going missing. I look forward, also, to hearing contributions from Dawn Bowden and David Melding in this debate this afternoon.

Now, it's a timely issue to discuss, because the current all-Wales protocol for missing children is being revised as part of updating the all-Wales child protection procedures. This revision, clearly, is welcome, but it is important that, in revising the protocol, expertise is drawn from a range of voices to inform how we can better safeguard children who go missing from home or from care.

Two voices I would like to commend to the Minister are the Children's Society and the Church in Wales, who, earlier this year, wrote a report called 'The Knowledge Gap', examining the safeguarding response to missing children in Wales. Now, the report includes some tangible and achievable recommendations that, if implemented, would help improve our safeguarding response to these children.

Many people may be surprised at the scale of missing children in Wales, which, last year, saw around 4,500 children and young people going missing from home or care. And these children went missing more than 11,000 times collectively. In the police force area that covers my own region in north Wales, over 700 children went missing almost 1,500 times during 2015-16.

Now, there are many reasons why children are, or feel forced to go, missing. A child may face a range of hardships at home, such as neglect, abuse or domestic violence. A child in care may be unhappy with his or her placement or may be placed into care outside of his or her local area, removing access to support networks and often causing them to go missing to the place they know as home. Children from home or care could also be groomed and exploited by people who they thought were friends, boyfriends or girlfriends. These are just some of the push-and-pull factors that many children and young people face that drive them into a missing episode.

Unfortunately, while these children may believe that they're escaping from a source of danger or unhappiness, they are at increased risk, of course, of harm during the missing episode. Children who go missing face the risk of sexual exploitation, criminal exploitation or human trafficking, and according to the Children's Society's research, 25 per cent of children who had run away overnight had either been hurt or harmed or had slept rough or with someone they had just met or had stolen or begged to survive. Now, these children face complex risks, and we need to make sure that we have a multi-agency response that keeps these children safe.

I want to focus my comments on three areas that largely determine the response children receive when they go missing, on which there is room for improvement in the current response to missing children. To do this, I'll structure my contribution this afternoon on the safeguarding process taken when a child is reported as missing.

So, firstly, I want to turn to information sharing. When a child is first reported as missing, as first responders, of course, the police will start to look for the child and, crucially, they'll decide, on a spectrum of risk, how unsafe the child may be and determine, therefore, their response accordingly. Now, to increase the chances of finding the child and keeping them safe, the police need information about where the child could be and whom he or she might be with. Without a complete picture of the risks these children face, drawn from a range of agencies, police officers will be unable to adequately assess the risks faced by children, leaving those children, of course, in danger. This is especially the case with children who are at risk of exploitation or trafficking.

The most effective way of having a robust risk assessment for these children is through multi-agency working. This involves members from police, health, education, children's services and the third sector all sharing information to build a holistic profile of a child at risk of going missing and to use that information to provide a child with appropriate support to prevent him or her from going missing repeatedly. Now, the Gwent multi-agency missing team exemplified the effectiveness of this, with missing incidents in the area decreasing by over 30 per cent since its inception, and I know we'll be hearing more about that later on in this debate.

However, findings from the Children's Society and the Church in Wales's joint report show that, of the local authorities who have provided information, 12 said that they don't share risk assessments with police and don't have a multi-agency partnership in place to allow agencies to share information. Now, this makes the police's task of trying to find the child more difficult and, therefore, could put a child who is known to be at risk in even more danger. There has to be a way for agencies across Wales to be able to share information with each other. Not only does doing so potentially protect a child from risks and, in extreme cases, save a child's life, but it can also enable agencies to better target their resources, thereby, of course, realising savings in the medium to longer term.

The UK Government has announced the creation of a new national missing persons database that will enable police forces to track missing children across boundaries. As children and, indeed, adults who go missing or face risks don't respect administrative boundaries, well, we need to ensure that these boundaries don't prevent close working and sharing information to keep those children safe. One way in which we can move forward with this in Wales is that local authorities, the all-Wales heads of children's services and police forces in Wales should agree a procedure whereby local authorities can place a marker on police systems identifying the risks to children so that the police have a clear understanding of the risks facing children when they go missing and then they can respond accordingly. This will help the police understand the risks to children when they go missing and help keep them safe.

Secondly, I want to turn to another vital part of the puzzle in keeping children safe. When a child is found or returns from a missing episode, he or she should be offered a debrief, which can also be called a return home interview. Now, a debrief gives a child an opportunity to talk about the missing episode, which can involve discussing where the child was during the episode and whom he or she was with. Debriefs also allow practitioners to understand the reasons why a child may have gone missing.

Although debriefs, by themselves, can't stop children from going missing repeatedly, they can be an effective safeguarding tool that can help to provide a child with support that could help prevent them from going missing again. If the interview provider is independent of statutory services, as they should be, a child may find it easier to trust the interview provider and the process, and, therefore, this introduces the child to a person in whom he or she could confide, instead of going missing in future. However, under the current all-Wales protocol for missing children, offering missing children a debrief is not a statutory requirement, whereas it is a legal duty in England. 'The Knowledge Gap' report illustrates the consequences of this lack of legal requirement. The report shows that four out of the 13 local authorities who provided information provide debriefs on a case-by-case basis, meaning that children who go missing aren't guaranteed an opportunity to talk about their experience and given support to, potentially, prevent them from going missing repeatedly. In north Wales, I know the situation has become urgent. Since the police innovation fund, which paid for debrief provision in north Wales, was discontinued by the UK Government, it's alarming that the average number of debriefs provided per quarter has decreased dramatically. So, to help address this, revising the all-Wales protocol for missing children provides us with a vital opportunity to make offering debriefs a statutory requirement across Wales, and I look forward to hearing the Minister's comments on this recommendation in particular, later on.

Finally, I wanted to turn to a group of children who are particularly at risk of going missing and therefore need a particular response. Now, these are children who are in care of the local authority but are placed in another authority area, known, of course, as children placed out of area. In some cases, looked-after children may need to be placed out of their home local authority area to safeguard them from risks identified in their home area. In 2015-16, around 1,500 children in Wales lived in placements outside of their local authority area. Now, this equates to around 27 per cent of all looked-after children in Wales. And it's now known that children who are placed out of their local authority areas are more likely to go missing—one of the key reasons for this being that, of course, they may try to return to any support networks they may have back in their home area. If a child who is placed out of area has had previous experiences of going missing, then this should be noted in any risk assessments that are passed on from the local authority placing the child to the local authority who is receiving the child into their care. This information should also be shared with the receiving police force, who may be the first statutory agency to pick up the child when they first go missing. 

Unfortunately, research from the Children's Society and the Church in Wales shows that 13 out of the 14 local authorities who responded to this question don't provide police forces with risk assessments of children placed in their areas, stating that it would be the responsibility of the placing local authority to do so. However, that is contradicted by the fact that only five out of the same 13 local authorities stated that they themselves shared a risk assessment with the police when they placed a child in a different area. So, it's clear that the police are vital. They're a vital agency in protecting children who go missing and should be informed when a child, and a child at high risk of going missing by the nature of their placement, is placed in their area. And I would echo the Children's Society and the Church in Wales's recommendation that this becomes a statutory requirement for local authorities to notify and share a risk assessment with the receiving police force when they place a child in their area.

Llywydd, I hope that you agree that this issue is urgent and timely. Revising the all-Wales protocol for missing children is an opportunity to put right the issues raised in this debate and endeavour to provide effective safeguarding support for all children in Wales who go missing. Good work is happening in Wales to safeguard missing children, and it's an endeavour we share, I'm sure, across parties, to keep improving our response to these vulnerable children and young people. We now have the opportunity to spread this good work across the country, and I would urge the Government, in response to this debate, to take action. Diolch. 

Can I thank Llyr for the opportunity of making a short contribution on this very important issue? I'm grateful to him for making reference in his speech to the work of the Gwent missing children's hub, which covers the Rhymney side of my constituency. I hope that my contribution can highlight, just in a little more detail, some of the useful work taking place there. I'd certainly urge Members from other parts of Wales who are taking a keen interest in this matter to visit the Gwent project, because it operates pretty much in line with the way that Llyr has set out as being necessary to reduce the risk. It brings together a range of partners in one hub that gives the clear benefit of the close working relationships that can act quickly and, most vitally, act together when reports of missing children are received.

As Llyr has already said, missing children reports are often received by the police as the initial emergency call, but experience shows that other partners may well be involved in the case of a missing child. Partners find that, by pooling their knowledge and expertise, then solutions can be found. The hub has also allowed more work to develop in response to child sexual exploitation and trafficking. Importantly, the hub allows for follow-up and support work to young people and their families, where appropriate. There was an evaluation report on the project just last year, which pointed to the— 

Can you wind this up, please?

—lessons learned up until that point in time. But as the Gwent hub is the only one of its type in Wales, and has shown some proved benefits in dealing with missing children and the wider issues associated with this, now would seem an appropriate time for other Welsh police forces and agencies to consider this model to help tackle many of the issues that Llyr has raised.

Can I commend Llyr for bringing forward this very important short debate? Like him, I think 'The Knowledge Gap' is a really important report, and I want to put on record my thanks to the Children's Society and the Church in Wales. I was delighted to be able to host and chair the launch of the report, actually, in the Senedd.

Can I say to Dawn that she makes really important points about the excellent practice in Gwent? South Wales Police are also developing really good practice, especially on the collecting of data and the need for joint working and looking at issues like policy on restraint. A lot of children go missing, and they're known about because the staff that could have intervened feel they cannot restrain. So, there are lots of layers to this problem that need careful thought. But I do commend the work of the police in this area.

Can I say, Deputy Presiding Officer, that the work of Carl Sargeant was really important? The leadership he gave on missing children was outstanding, and indeed he, after hearing the presentation by South Wales Police, asked for the ministerial group on outcomes for children to receive that presentation and have a full discussion, to which Gwent Police also came along. It was really, really important. These are highly vulnerable children, as we have heard, and there are now some very practical ways in which we could improve practice in this area, but it is something that needs vigilance and quick action, I think, because the outcomes for some of these children, when they're away from where they should be, in terms of their exploitation, criminally or whatever—it's a really, really critical area that needs attention. Thank you.

I call the Minister for Children and Social Care to reply to the debate—Huw Irranca Davies.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Can I just begin by thanking Llyr for bringing forward this debate today, and also for outlining the challenges ahead, as well as some of the good work that is going on, and putting it forward with calmness and consideration, but also with passion for actually meeting these challenges and seeking improvements within this field? And equally the points raised by my colleagues: Dawn Bowden referring to the good work on a multi-agency basis on the ground in Gwent already, and what lessons we can learn from that, which I'll turn back to in a moment; and also David Melding, who, of course, as colleagues will know, chairs the ministerial advisory group on the outcomes of children. This is an area that I know that that advisory group are looking at as well, to bring forward the improvements that have been referred to. So, can I thank them all for bringing this debate to this Chamber here today?

Let me touch on some of the issues. I'm going to go through in detail as well some of the ways that we think are the ways forward. I am, as David Melding has referred to, stepping into some quite big boots here, after the leadership of Carl Sargeant within this area.

Well, first of all, as we know, the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 came into force last year. At the heart of this Act is working with people to achieve what matters to them—better use of preventative services. This will have more of an impact on a person's life chances, and it allows us to use those resources to help more people. I'm very aware, as Members are, that every missing episode carries with it the potential for a child to come to serious harm in a number of ways. The reasons for why children go missing are varied, they're complex, they're unique to each situation and each individual child, but we know, when a child goes missing, they may be exposed to a range of emotional, physical and sexual risks as well. So, it is very important that agencies work together, when a child goes missing, to share information and to provide a rapid response so that the child can first be located and made safe as soon as possible.

The way in which we respond to children following a missing episode is also very important. We need a proportionate approach, and an approach that is focused on the child, in each incident when a child goes missing, which considers their individual needs and whether there are well-being, care, support, child protection issues that need to be addressed. I’m pleased to say that my officials, under the leadership of my predecessor, Carl Sargeant, have been involved in a period of very active engagement with front-line service providers who work with children who go missing. The work has helped us better understand the real issues on the ground, to ensure that our policy response is a really informed one that fully understands the landscape as it currently exists in Wales, and what we can do better. So, I have agreed to fund work to gather the views of children themselves—that is critical—so that their experience and their opinions about the decisions that are made about them inform the policies we now develop to keep them safe.

The Welsh Government has also provided funding to the Cardiff and Vale of Glamorgan Regional Safeguarding Children Board to review and develop national protection procedures for Wales on behalf of ADSS Cymru, and in consultation with regional safeguarding boards. The Welsh Government is also supporting this through the facilitation of work with multi-agency groups to develop national practice guidance on specific safeguarding issues, to be used in conjunction with the national protection procedures. This important piece of work is expected to be fully complete by December 2018. It’s ongoing now; now is the time to feed in the ideas.

At the heart of this work is my commitment to move away from a process-driven approach to safeguarding and ticking boxes to a clear person-centred approach in line with the intent of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. So, a multi-agency task and finish group has been established, under the ministerial advisory group of improving outcomes for children, to consider such an approach in relation to children missing from home or care. This group is developing national practice guidance, to be used in conjunction with the national protection procedures. The national practice guidance on children missing from home or care will support a consistent and proportionate approach to every child who goes missing in Wales, and this will include arrangements for every child to have their need for information, advice and assistance considered in a proportionate way that also promotes their well-being.

Now, some children and their families will benefit from information and advice about preventative services. Some children may need to have their care and support needs assessed, and some children will also need a wrap-around child-protection plan. Those with existing plans may need these reviewed after an episode of going missing. This specific issue of going missing, we can agree, has to be addressed through a multi-agency strategy meeting, where required, that will inform a child-centred assessment, planning or review response, dependent on the well-being and safeguarding needs of that individual child. I’m aware, as the Member has said, that he is a signatory to a letter from the Children’s Society, which raises a number of issues relating to missing children that I’d like to address. By the way, I’m happy to meet as well and to discuss it.

On the issue of proactive data sharing with the police, I’m pleased to say that South Wales Police, as David Melding has already mentioned, are providing dedicated time, working in consultation with the other three forces in Wales, to develop a process for the recording and sharing of information needed for the police to risk-assess individual children in care, should they go missing. This will be considered as part of the work of practice guidance on children missing from home or care. I can give you that assurance.    

Will you take an intervention?

Indeed I will give way.

I did a whole report on this myself in 2013, and there were protocols put in place in 2011. I was at the launch of the Gwent project, and here we are, where it is only a project. How quickly can other children, like the children in my area, expect to see the services that, in my opinion, they rightly deserve, and that those authorities who were told in 2011 to work together start doing so?

My friend is absolutely right. I think there has been acknowledgement here in the Chamber today of the good work that is going on, but it is not universal. That is the issue that the ministerial advisory group are looking at. This report is a welcome contribution to that. But it is true that we know, actually, what works, and we can see it working, and we funded much of that. We now need to see it rolled out much better, and I'll turn to some of the other issues. But, you're right, and I commend my friend Joyce on the commitment she's shown to this, pushing this agenda forward over several years.

 On the issue of the statutory duty, if I can turn to that, to provide debrief interviews to missing children equivalent to the existing provisions in England—by the way, the approach in England is very different. It's noticeably different. England don't have national procedures, as we do, and that necessitates they have to have individual protocols. There are no national procedures. We're actually ahead of the game here, and it is acknowledged. 

But on that issue, I remain concerned that this in and of itself as a focus may not improve safeguarding responses to individual children, and in fact, if I can draw Llyr's attention to a Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary report published just last year, it suggested that the implementation of the statutory duty in England is inconsistent, and that—and I'll quote briefly—

'while there are many examples of positive practice and initiatives through multi-agency working'

—in England, this is, by the way—

'we have found no evidence that the police service and the other organisations with responsibilities for the welfare of children understand the outcomes this achieves for children, or use this understanding to inform their planning and operational practice'. 

We have to be an intelligent intervention and make it work for the outcomes, not simply tick the box, 'We've done it', debrief done, and so on. The criticism is there. Now, there is good evidence, by the way, that in some parts it is working. I think the report refers to Worcester and elsewhere. But there's also evidence it's very variable, and it's the ability there to say, 'We've done it. Good. Done'. 

I firmly believe that a multi-agency child-centred approach based on individual needs within the operation of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act, supported here in this Assembly, offers a much more robust and child-centred safeguarding response. You will also be aware, and it's been mentioned in the Chamber today, of existing good practice in Wales, through services, as Dawn mentioned, such as the Gwent missing project, and, as David mentioned, the south Wales independent child advocacy missing service, which provide debrief services and ongoing support. We know there's good practice out there. It provides advocacy and they provide referral to ensure that those children at the greatest risk have strong safety plans in place. 

On the issue of looked-after children going missing from out-of-area placements, the ministerial advisory group on improving outcomes for children includes a work programme looking specifically at residential care, including out-of-area placement. This includes work on notifications, placement planning and placement choice. This work programme is well advanced, and resources have been made available from central Government for research and scoping work to inform a way forward, and we will ensure, by the way, that the Children's Society report is taken into account as that work is developed.

I'm not sure if I responded to my friend when she was asking about the timetable, but, as I made clear in my earlier remarks, by 2018 we hope to have the outcomes for all of this work so we can then say, 'This is the way to proceed'.

So, I would like to thank the Children's Society for their report and the contribution that it makes to informing the evidence that it provides as part of this strategic approach to improving the real outcomes of all children in Wales. I'm sure that Members will agree that the breadth of actions that we've heard from today that this Government, with partners on the ground, has put in place, will help both children but also the professionals who work tirelessly to support them to achieve their outcomes. I would like to thank once again all the Members—Llyr and all others who've contributed to this—and I think it's notable to see how many Members are here at the close of play today to hear this debate, how important this is, and how, actually, we can do things differently and better in Wales, and we need to drive this good practice right out across the land. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Thank you very much.