Research - Every Five Minutes

Every Five Minutes, published in October 2005, was an in-depth research, undertaken by Geoff Newiss and Catherine Meyer to try and establish how many children go missing in the UK every year. The report, based on sources available at that time, concluded that it was impossible to obtain an accurate and comprehensive picture of the nature or scale of the problem (estimates ranged between 100,000 and 180,000). Data collection on missing children was neither coordinated nor centralised.

Copies of the report are available for purchase in the shop, or you can download a copy by clicking here.

A second report, published six-months later, offered an overview of the European Union’s approach. Here again we found that the data on missing children were defective.  In a study published in 2001, the European Commission itself had called for the creation of “national focal points” in each Member State to organise and improve data collection - something which PACT has been campaigning for ever since.  Go to our achievement.