Policy & Practice: Briefing - Campaign calls for support forrunaways

This sounds rather familiar. It should do - Safe and Sound? is the second national survey of "running away" among young people. It is a follow-up of 1999's Still Running and surveyed 11,000 young people in England, mainly aged 14 to 16. It estimates that nationally about 100,000 run away overnight each year.

Who are they? While there are some differences in demographic groups - girls are 50 per cent more likely to run away than boys - it is remarkable how diverse this group is. Basically it is something that happens among young people from all backgrounds.

They must have some characteristics in common. There are factors broadly associated with running away. Some 6.7 per cent ran from family homes with both birth parents, but three times that rate ran away from step-families and nearly five times that rate fled other situations, such as grandparents or other relatives and from care. Predictably they tended to have strained relationships with their parents or carers - and 26 per cent felt they had been "forced" to leave home. They are less likely to feel happy at school than non-runaways, although worry about bullying or exams did not show up strongly. Those with issues in their lives such as trouble with the police, or problems with drugs or alcohol, were four times as likely to have run away.