Children recorded as ‘missing’ from their out-of-home care placement are some of the most vulnerable in society. While their whereabouts are often unknown to their carers and caseworkers continue to interact with other public services, including hospitals, schools, police, homelessness services and justice systems. Linked administrative data can connect information across government agencies, revealing where children reappear and where opportunities exist for earlier and more coordinated intervention and support.

Finding ‘invisible’ children

Children recorded as missing from care - that is, children who spend unauthorised time away from their placement - are a particularly difficult population to study. Some return quickly to their placements, while others stay with family, friends or partners, move between locations, experience homelessness or unstable accommodation, or become vulnerable to exploitation and other harms while away from care.

Traditional research methods struggle to capture these experiences. Surveys and interviews are valuable but can be difficult with those who are transient or reluctant to share their experiences due to mistrust.

These children can also be difficult to follow because their experiences are distributed across multiple services and agencies. No single agency has visibility of the full picture. By linking administrative records, policymakers can see where children subsequently appear across the service system and identify points where earlier or better coordinated support may have been possible.

We examined records for 47,812 children in the out-of-home care system between 2000 and 2019 using the NSW Human Services Dataset, which links administrative records across multiple service systems. Of these, 1,149 (2.4 per cent, or almost one in 40) had at least one episode where “missing” was recorded as the reason for exit from care. Linking these records to other administrative datasets allowed us to see where children subsequently appeared across government systems.

The resulting picture is striking. Although 23 per cent did not return to out-of-home care after being recorded as missing from their placement, almost all remained visible elsewhere. Among those who did not return, 92 per cent appeared in another public service dataset. Across all children recorded as missing, 54 per cent were observed in another system within a week and 90 per cent within three months. Schools were an important point of contact, with 39 per cent appearing in school attendance records within the first week.

Patterns of vulnerability

Looking across public service systems reveals what individual services cannot. Children recorded as missing from care show evidence of substantial vulnerability even before the missing episode occurs.

After accounting for children’s prior service contacts and other observed characteristics, going missing from care was associated with additional downstream risk. This included a 23 per cent increase in the relative risk of being a person of interest to police and an 8 per cent increase in the risk of appearing in police records as a victim of crime. Being recorded as missing from care was associated with an 88 per cent higher likelihood of later belonging to a high-service-use group with complex health, housing, safety and justice needs.

These findings do not tell us why an individual child leaves a placement, but they show that missing episodes are embedded within wider trajectories of vulnerability. They are also concentrated among children experiencing instability within care, particularly those in residential settings and youth refuges.

Although the analysis accounts for observed differences before children went missing, other unobserved factors may contribute to both missing episodes and subsequent outcomes. That is precisely why being recorded as missing from care is an important policy signal: it is a visible indicator that a child may be experiencing significant and ongoing vulnerability.

Linked data can inform connected responses

Governments already hold enormous amounts of information about children experiencing vulnerability. The challenge is using it better.

A child protection worker may know about a placement breakdown. Police may know about repeated missing reports or offending. A hospital may know about injuries or mental health presentations. A school may know about prolonged absence. A homelessness service may know that a young person has nowhere safe to stay.

The lesson is not that every agency needs access to every piece of information, but that systems need ways to recognise when repeated contact across services signals a need for coordinated action. Missing episodes can provide an opportunity for child protection, police, health, education, housing and justice services to reconnect a child with support and determine how they can work together to coordinate it.

Importantly, enhancing coordination should not simply mean greater surveillance. Many of these children already experience extensive police and justice contact. Joining up information should enable earlier, relational and therapeutic support – not create another pathway into criminalisation.

Our research also has an important gap. Indigenous Data Sovereignty requirements limited our ability to analyse Aboriginal children as a separate cohort, although our analysis indicated differences in their risk of being recorded as missing. Understanding these experiences requires dedicated Aboriginal-led research and culturally safe responses.

Government needs to look across systems

There is a broader lesson here for social policy.

Many of the populations that government most needs to support interact with multiple public systems over time, yet no single agency sees the full picture. Linked administrative data can reveal patterns that remain hidden within individual service systems, helping policymakers identify shared risks, service gaps and opportunities for coordinated intervention.

For children recorded as missing from care, the lesson is particularly clear. Many remain visible to government through ongoing contact with public services. The task for policymakers is not simply to identify vulnerability, but to use those points of contact to coordinate support earlier, reduce fragmentation and improve outcomes for children most at risk.

Amy Conley Wright is Professor of Child and Family Social Work at The University of Sydney.

Stefanie Schurer is Professor of Economics at the School of Economics, The University of Sydney.

Image credit: Kerkez/ Canva.