A CHARITY has called for action to protect youngsters from sexual exploitation after figures revealed North Yorkshire Police were asked to look for children who were missing from care 844 times last year.

The NSPCC said when children frequently go missing it puts them at increased risk of harm, particularly from grooming gangs, who specifically target vulnerable youngsters for sexual abuse.

Of the 844 incidents of police being asked to look for missing children in North Yorkshire, 28 youngsters were reported as missing more than once.

Nationally, 3,000 children repeatedly went missing from care last year, with police forces in England and Wales recording more than 28,000 incidents in total.

Some children ran away dozens of times, and one vanished on 67 occasions, the NSPCC said.

The charity has called for a more focused effort to establish why young people – particularly those in care – go missing and to improve ways of preventing it happening.

Tom Rahilly, head of the NSPCC’s Looked After Children programme, said: “The state needs to be a parent for these children. If any other child went missing their parents would move heaven and earth to find them and to understand why they did it. It should be no different for young people in care.

“Repeatedly going missing should be a big warning sign as this kind of behaviour can put them at serious risk of harm such as grooming or sexual exploitation. But we have to understand why they are doing it.

“Children go missing for many reasons – they’re being bullied, they’ve been put in a home miles from their family and they miss them and their friends, or they just don’t trust staff enough to tell them where they are.

“Many will have been abused before being placed in care and they need a lot of attention and protection. Going missing for just an hour or two can be long enough for them to come to harm.”

The NSPCC has called for professionals working in residential homes to act like parents and to understand why a child is going missing, as well as seeing that repeatedly going missing from care is a sign that children are at heightened risk of harm.