Cutbacks imperil young runaways as local helplines pull the plug
Date posted: 02/09/2011
Local services for runaway children are at risk of being severely eroded according to charity leaders, following a dramatic drop in the number of dedicated projects since April.
Missing People, a charity that provides a national helpline for children who run away, also offers an out-of-hours service to local projects, allowing them to divert their phone lines to the national helpline outside of office hours.
But Martin Houghton-Brown, chief executive of the charity, said the out-of-hours service has experienced a 60 per cent fall in the number of projects diverting to it.
"We're hearing from local projects that they've lost funding, they are closing, or they are scaling back their resources to such an extent that they are closing their helpline," he explained.
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