Research - The Current Landscape

For almost a decade, PACT has examined the gaps and weaknesses in the response to missing children in the UK.  Our three reports, Every Five Minutes, A Postcode Lottery and Beyond Every Five Minutes concluded that because of deficiencies in data collection, it is not possible to obtain an accurate and comprehensive picture of the scale of the problem in Britain; and that coordination between the police, Whitehall, the local authorities and the voluntary sector is poor.  It is compounded by inadequate coordination within each of these groups.   PACT has, therefore, been campaigning for the creation in Britain of a national resource centre, based on the highly successful American model. It would have a similar remit and would bring together under one roof representatives from central government, local authorities, the police and the voluntary sector.

Thanks to the support of the City Bridge Trust  and the Clore Duffield Foundation, PACT was then able to recruit the Brand Union, part of the WPP group, to undertake an independent comprehensive review of the whole "mising sector" and offer its solutions on how it could better organised.  The report, The Current Landscape, published in 2008 strongly endorsed PACT's own analysis of the inadequacy of the current system.  

You can download a copy of this in-depth analysis by clicking here.

The report also concluded that the best way forward was for CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection) to take over responsibility for all categories of missing and exploited children.  This would lay the foundations for the kind of national center PACT had been campaigning for and result in better coordination on a national basis between the police, government and the charitable sector.