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Runaways

Lady Incredible May 7 2005, 05:40 PM Post #1

I was just wondering if any of you have to deal with your residents running away from your facility and what your procedures/guidelines are.

prsthelrd May 7 2005, 05:54 PM Post #2

we have had kids run away

the home reports it to the law enforcement

and then looks for them, at this point it becomes a case by case issue

Lady Incredible May 7 2005, 08:34 PM Post #3
Are you allowed to try and stop them?

prsthelrd May 7 2005, 08:50 PM Post #4

If you mean a physical intervention, not necessarily.

I think age is also a factor

At another place I worked if you knew that and could back it up that the child was at risk to being a danger to themself (suicide, self mutalation) you could use a physical intervention. otherwise we were just to report it to our supervisor who in turn reported it to the police

webmaster May 8 2005, 02:52 PM Post #5

I currently work in residential foster care and we have a runaway about one a year or two. The first home I worked at we had at least one or two a month. One time we had over 2/3's of both houses runaway over a 4 day period.

In my experience most runs are un-preventable. They are usually very impulsive and when they are not, almost always occur at school, home visit or some other activity where they are not under direct staff supervision. I would say that 75% of all run-a-ways I have been involved with occurred at school and they usually had anywhere from an hour to 7 hour head start on us. Another 15% occurred during home visits, and the other 10% from the house or church.

At that first home, we were allowed to take measures that discouraged running away, (Close supervision, not allowing the child to have money, taking their shoes away while at the home in-doors, etc.) but we were not allowed to stop them. If they tan we would try to keep them in sight while we called the police and admin. The police could physically hold them, we could not. The bright side for the home was that only one child was ever truly successful at running away (they were able to run away and did not get caught until after they were considered an adult), however the natural consequences were far worse than any she would have received as a juvenile (She had no education, because she dropped out. Plus she was a single parent to her child that was born while she was a teenager on the run)

We had youth that were able to stay on the run for several months, but most were caught within a day or two. We had youth that were able to get well over a 1000 miles away, but most stayed right in the local area. The times that we were able to foil runaway plans, resulted in some pretty funny stories, and the more I dealt with runaways the less terrifying they became for me. But I will never forget the very fist one I had to deal with, and how truly scared I was.

We had been houseparents for less than a week. The girl that ran away was 13 years old and was attending summer school. She was a beautiful young lady that seemed very intelligent and for the most part a very sweet personality. She asked my wife to make muffins and get soft drinks for an end of summer school party they were having. She gladly did, and to this day we still joke about how not only did she let her run away, but gave her food to eat while she was gone. We dropped here off at summer school that morning, at noon when my wife went to pick her up she never came out. After about a 1/2 hour she went into the school and they said she was never there that day. The chaos began, and we notified admin and the police. I spent most of the day driving around town, checking the parks and local kid hangouts, all the while terrified that she might try to hitchhike somewhere and be abducted by some psycho or something. I honestly can't describe the terror I felt. Thankfully she didn't run far and was arrested three days later. She ended spending most of here teen years in placement at the State Girls School, and group homes.

I have gotten much better at dealing with runaways and I am thankful I don't have to deal with it as much as I used to, but it still has an effect on me when I do.

Lady Incredible May 10 2005, 07:20 PM Post #6

Thanks for the replies!

We are not physically allowed to stop anyone from running away here either.
Most times the kids even tell us they plan to run. The law enforcement here really despise runaways and can't stand the state laws that won't intervene.
 

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