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Throughout the animal kingdom, the instinct to flee is the dominant reaction to threat, whether real or perceived. The horse racing industry, for example, depends on that instinct, albeit subverted by human beings. In a race, the fastest horse wins a pot of gold for the owner. In the wild, the fastest horse stays alive.

It requires superhuman self-control to react to danger with a cool head, for the flight instinct is also a governing factor across the spectrum of human conduct. Unfortunately, we barely recognise the instinct in daily life or appreciate how, in the absence of a discernible escape route, our behaviour might fast collapse into panic and our chances of physical or psychological survival plummet correspondingly. Social and business interactions are, however, characterised by various escape routes, often legally enforceable: the right to say no to sex, divorce, get-out clauses in business contracts and employment probationary periods are some of many mechanisms designed to circumvent our being trapped in disagreeable or threatening situations.


Tolerance of real or perceived discomfort or anxiety may vary according to the person, the time, the place. But how many happy, well adjusted children have not occasionally skipped school, stayed out late, told white lies to their parents in order to snatch a little freedom? How many dutiful, responsible adults have not occasionally feigned sickness to gain a day off work? We have an ambivalent attitude, too often determined by social class and labelling, towards manifestations of the flight instinct. Youngsters who backpack around the world are adventurous, youngsters who flee care reprobate; escaped prisoners of war are heroic, escaped convicts a danger to society. Yet they are all propelled by the same instinct and motivated by the fundamental need to reclaim control over their lives.

As a child, I was cherished and content, yet would "run away" with the family dog regularly and noisily - as far as the garden gate or the lane beyond. Eventually, the prospect of hunger and cold forced me back, but I was never contrite. Like all children, I needed liberty, opportunities for adventure, safety valves for the pressures built up by teachers, parents and life's general obligations, and all without threat of rejection. Like all children, I over-reached myself occasionally or over-stepped boundaries, but the safety net was always there and the consequences for misbehaviour always reasonable. Yet, had I been a looked-after child, I am sure that my behaviour would have been interpreted as dysfunctional, simply by virtue of my status.

When I worked in residential child care, runaways, whether potential or actual, topped the list of staff anxieties. While the child was missing, blame was heaped on the staff; on return, the child reaped the whirlwind. Absconders were punished, humiliated, even locked in their rooms; persistent absconders often found themselves transferred to secure accommodation.

Whatever reason an absconder put forward for having fled would be denigrated and dismissed out of hand. The Waterhouse Report of the inquiry into child abuse in homes in north Wales is littered with examples of children absconding from abusive institutions, reporting the offences to the police and being returned to the hands of the abusers^.1 The tribunal was essentially a historic investigation and it would be reasonable to assume that the inspirations behind absconding are now better understood and the management of absconders less callous than in the dark days of the 1970s and 1980s. Although some progress has been made, a Department of Health research paper paints a picture that is still bleak.²


Less than 1 per cent of young people are in residential or foster care. But 30 per cent of reported absconders are from this group. Clearly, substitute care implies a high risk of absconding and will continue to do so while its own contribution to the problem remains unexplored.

I sometimes resented the control my parents wielded because it seemed to interfere with my capacity to be an individual. How much, therefore, might the average young person resent the control of strangers, particularly where it is reinforced by officialdom? On 9 October, the Liverpool Daily Post reported that Anthony John Witchell had been jailed for eight months for assisting a teenage girl to abscond from care. The irony lies in the fact that she was placed in care after alleging that Witchell had abused her. For this girl, it seems that the devil she knew was a lesser threat.

¹ Ronald Waterhouse, Lost in Care, The Stationery Office, 2000

² Nina Biehal and Jim Wade, Children Who Go Missing, Department of Health, 2002

Alison Taylor is a novelist, a former senior child care worker and the winner of the 1996 Community Care Readers' Award.