By Ismail Khwaja

Police have dramatically decreased the time spent looking for missing children due to new working methods.

Specialist units were introduced following a restructure of the force in September last year, leading to a reduction of almost 70%.

Some districts have also reported a 90% reduction in time spent looking for young people.

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Missing and Child Exploitation Teams are made up of detectives and other specially-trained officers who are focused on tracking down those who have disappeared and stopping them from going missing again in future.

Detective chief inspector Lee Whitehead, who is part of the unit, said: “Each missing event is treated as an investigation and because you have the continuity of the teams, you build up a relationship with that missing person that goes missing on a regular basis.

“So we can at least understand what they’re running from or what they’re running to.”

Since the implementation of this new model, not only has the amount of time needed been reduced, it’s also contributed to an upturn in successfully finding missing people.

Det Insp Whitehead continued: “The good thing about that, really important, is that quite often we’re finding children with people they should not be with and we’re identifying offences.

"So not only are we able to save and protect the children, we can then bring the offenders to justice or at least serve notices like child abduction warning notices to prevent them further endangering the lives of these young children.”

There are often cases of the same children repeatedly going missing, which police say tends to be from places like foster homes or families “who are not looking after them as well as they can”.

This is a specific area, which has been targeted and by working with those children, the local authorities develop both a safety and response plan for them.

DCI Whitehead added: “So if they go missing, we may have an agreement that they ring us.

"If nothing else, at least we know they’re safe, even if we haven’t got them physically in front of us.

“We give them really good safety advice and where necessary, we can assist them with phones and give them places of safety to go to.”

Despite previous work in finding missing children being in-line with current guidelines, it has been “recognised now nationally that they weren’t really fit for purpose”.

DCI Whitehead added: “There was a lack of ownership really in that, if a child went missing it would be dealt with by local officers.

“Those officers had other calls to attend to, they’ll go off duty and it was a case that it was handed over.”

However, the latest work being done in the county is said to have gained the recognition of other police forces.

“It is so successful that nationally we are being approached by other police forces to understand what we’ve done with a view to them adopting our systems," said DCI Whitehead.

“I was speaking to Sussex Police. They're keen to build on our successes and obviously we want to share it to protect children."

While there are no current figures for the number of children missing in the county, Kent’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Matthew Scott earlier revealed there are 2,200 reports a year - seven a day - of people going missing directly linked to their mental health.

It’s a statistic, which DCI Whitehead says is a big issue they’re trying to tackle: “Mental health cuts across so many of our other work, particular with adults as well.

"I know health are doing they’re very best to invest far more in that.

“People just can’t get the services they need in a timely fashion. Missing is a big part of that.

"Our main concern with missing children is they’re not being exploited.

“That’s either sexually, within the county lines, within gangs; it’s just trying to stop them ending up in that world at a very early stage - just to look after them.”