News

A young runaway found himself virtually imprisoned by a relative before turning to Safe in the City for help. Trust was required to keep him off the streets and accept emergency foster ca  re. Graham Hopkins reports on how project leader Andy McCullough dealt with the issue.

Case notes

Practitioner: Andy McCullough, project leader, Safe in the City.

Field: Runaway children and young people.

Location: Manchester.

Client: John Kenyon, who had just turned 16.

Case history: Safe in the City has a free phoneline which links to confidential free national lines such as Message Home, Childline and so on. Message Home contacted Safe in the City having recommended that John contact the project. John had said that he was calling from a phone box but wasn’t sure where he was. He had run away from his family in Belgium and had made his way back to England, living with his uncle. He said that his uncle, who travelled around and moved in and out of relationships, had confined him to a room for about a year - only being allowed out to clean the house. He was effectively his uncle’s slave.

Dilemma: The project staff needed to involve social services and police in John’s case, but John was fearful of this because he had been warned that if he spoke to either of them he would end up in prison.

Risk factor: While working with John there was a risk that he would run away from the project and either return to his abusive uncle or end up living on the street.

Outcome: His confidence having been won, John was successfully reunited with his mother abroad. However, no charges were brought against John’s uncle.

The name of the young person has been changed

By age 16, one in nine young people will have run away from home or care.¹ During a year some 129,000 overnight runaway incidents happen in the UK. The government has recognised that under-16 runaways have the weakest services and is consulting on new guidelines.

One service for this client group in Manchester is Safe in the City, a Children’s Society project (although funded from other sources as well). Taking the runaway figures at face value would mean that in the Greater Manchester area about 5,300 runaway incidents will occur each year - more than 100 a week.

Most runaways are overnight, but this was not the case for John Kenyon, who was referred to the project through the Message Home service. “When John called he was unsure where he was,” says project leader Andy McCullough. “Staff asked him what he could see and he was able to pinpoint a building for us to go and meet him. We often get calls from young people who aren’t sure of their information because they are confused or frightened - so this wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was this young man saying that he had been hidden away for a year.”

Two workers - male and female - went out to meet him. “This was our first risk element - sussing out what we were getting into,” continues McCullough. “Workers here often have to think on their feet. They have to be looking who’s on a street corner, who’s that talking over there? If I talk to this young person will a pimp get involved?”

The workers brought John back. He was very nervous. “It was evident straightaway that something was wrong - his clothes didn’t fit, his hair was matted with dirt, he was hungry, he made no eye contact,” recalls McCullough. “The first thing to do wasn’t to phone social services or police, but get him something to eat. Basic Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of need’: we’re not going to get the young people’s head unless they feel warm, safe and have had something to eat.”

McCullough then called a meeting. “We worked through our very clear criteria about when to breach confidentiality. We decided that there was no way we could hold onto this. However, there was a real risk that if we went to social services or police, this young person might well do a runner.

“We spoke to John, and explained about social services and the police and our relationship with them,” he says. John was frightened because his uncle had said that if he said anything to social services or police, they would put him in prison. “We took that at face value,” says McCullough.

With a contact in social services, McCullough began to explore options: “One would be to not believe it and do nothing. Another would be to look at children’s homes - but we counted that out immediately, not only because of his age but because they can be quite harsh environments and he was extremely vulnerable. So we decided to look at the third option - emergency foster care.”

As the day wore on, John’s story emerged. He had lived with his mum in Belgium and was getting in trouble, so came to live with his uncle in England. John was kept in a room, and was only allowed out of his room to clean. He said he had a curtain to sleep with and looked forward to winter so the fleas wouldn’t bite so badly. “It felt far-fetched, but we set up a meeting with the social worker,” says McCullough. “John agreed but only if we were with him and if it was held in our building - which he knew.”

Unfortunately, there was no foster care placement available so John was placed in a men’s hostel. “Not the most obvious place, not the safest place,” adds McCullough. “But it would be a place where he would be quite anonymous; he’d be able to lock his door.”

At the meeting the next day, John “began to unpack his story”. McCullough recalls: “Social services were incredibly patient with him. They spent three hours going through his story and what would happen next: how the police would become involved and that they might need him for evidence. They also managed to get a short-term foster carer and contacted his mother, who had been looking for him. The police did follow up with an investigation but didn’t find enough evidence.”

Through the trust of the project staff, John - a young person potentially lost to the street - was reunited with his mother, moved back to Belgium and picked up his education. And was safe again.

¹ The Children’s Society, Still Running Children on the Streets in the UK, 1999

Arguments for risk

- The project was confident that it could create a safe space for John to talk. It was felt that this could also be achieved by not breaching confidentiality (at least to begin with).

- The project believed John. And through that he was able to tell his story. It would have been very easy to have thought this was too far-fetched and done nothing.

- The local authority and police gave the project time to create a package of care, and trusted the voluntary sector to make an assessment of risk.

- The project’s approach enables it to maintain relationships with people on the run, who don’t always surrender information straightaway. If the “at risk of significant harm” model was used, “we’d be phoning police and social services up everyday”, says McCullough. “The reality is that they can’t just turn up on the streets and pick them up. So, it’s about building up trust.“

Arguments against risk

- The risk was also that it might not be true, that the project would be pursuing this complex and time-consuming case for nothing.

- If true, there was a risk that the child protection system would let him down. John was also scared of social services and police. He was told they wouldn’t believe him; that he’d end up    in prison. Any attempt to involve these authorities could be seen by him to be a breach of trust resulting in him running away again - and putting himself at even greater risk.

- Indeed, he could have just run off and never been seen again. As McCullough says: “We’re a voluntary sector agency - we cannot hold people, we cannot lock them up. They vote with their feet. It challenges us to work creatively because young people will soon let you know that they are not interested.”

- By placing John in a men’s hostel he was vulnerable. These places can be packed, noisy and threatening.

Independent comment

The approach taken by the project proved successful in helping John to return to safe adult care and also highlights the dilemmas of working with this vulnerable group of young people, writes Jim Wade.

Projects that work with runaways have to operate with a high threshold of risk. We know that young people are wary of approaching agencies for help, advice and support. Confidentiality is therefore crucial. The project was aware that statutory involvement would be necessary to achieve a satisfactory solution, but this needed to be balanced against the risk of him running again.

The right balance required sensitive negotiation by the project staff.

Young runaways need an independent ear - someone to listen carefully, take them seriously, allow them space to make supported decisions at their own pace. In all these respects, the project did remarkably well. It also points to the valuable role that the voluntary sector can play in mediating between young people and the statutory services.

A positive resolution would not have occurred without the collaboration between the project, police and social services. The mutual respect between the practitioners involved permitted an uninhibited focus on John’s needs.

The need to place John temporarily in a men’s hostel was not satisfactory. Local authorities may need to consider having designated refuge foster carers to provide short-term respite, perhaps alongside a more general fostering role.

Jim Wade is co-author of Lost from View, a study of missing persons in the UK.