FOSTER CARE

Kids in care do not feel loved or wanted, so they will run away

- BY JACKIE ANNETT

Change is desperately needed in the social care system to stem the tide of youngsters running away from foster homes, a crusader for vulnerable children warns.

Author and campaigner Louise Allen speaks from experience - because she did just that herself and ended up in the clutches of a drugs gang.

In an exclusive interview to mark National Missing Children's Day, Louise calls for better cohesion between the agencies involved in looking after youngsters in care to ensure they are kept safe.

She is supported by the Missing People charity-backed by the Mirror's own Missed campaign - that claims in many cases, youngsters are unhappy in their foster homes.

Around 75,000 of the 170,000 people who disappear in the UK every year are children. And one in 10 kids in care go missing, compared to only one in 200 brought up outside the system.

Louise, 58, who is now a happily married mum and foster parent herself, tells of her own nightmare, which led to her fleeing her abusive foster family in the 1970s.

She recalls: "I was just 14 and in care when me and some other girls started moving heroin from Oxford to London.

"It wasn't roadmen who ran the county lines back then, but rockabillies who looked for vulnerable children.

"We would take packages in little Army canvas bags which had anarchy badges all over them and then hand them over for cash before catching the train back to Oxford.

"I didn't understand the consequences. It only became scary when one of the girls was sexually abused by one of the rockabillies in front of us and we couldn't do anything about it."