08 December 2011

THE Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has backed aChildren’s Society campaign for a national safey net for the UK’s forgotten young runaways.
Research by the Society has revealed that 100,000 children in the UK run away from home or care every year. That is one child every five minutes. More than a quarter have been the victim of a harmful or dangerous experience.

He said: “It needs backing at the highest level. It needs a bit of money from national government as well as elsewhere, there’s no way round that. The actual level of knowledge about the scale of the problem is very, very low.”

Yvonne Morris, Children’s Adviser for the Diocese of Oxford called for people to support the Children’s Society and their projects to help support family life and to make runaways safe. She said: “This report highlights the vulnerability of runaways. It highlights the great work done by the Children’s Society in making them safe and highlights that families need support and children need advocates who will listen to them and help them have a voice.
“But highlighting is useless if nothing changes for the children. I urge people to support the Children’s Society’s work.”