Nadia was 14 when she ran away from home in Essex. For more than a month she slept rough in London. "I had a few scary encounters," she recalls. "It was very cold, I had no money, and I was stuck."
Thanks to the charity Missing People, Nadia was reunited with her mum. She also went back to school. "The school stayed in contact with my mum all the time. It's quite cool that they were interested where I was and stuff. It made it easier for me to go back," she says.
There are no official figures for how many children and young people like Nadia are missing from education. The Government estimates the figure to be around 10,000. But responses to a series of freedom of information requests by Children & Young People Now suggest that the figure could be much closer to 20,000 (see analysis, p15). And in 2006/07 nearly a fifth of local authorities were not tracking children missing from education, despite a Government target, set in 2002, stipulating that they should be by December 2005.
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