I think I first met Charlene in 1986, but I'm unsure. She passed away in the early 1990's. I'm struggling to see what has changed for young people like her, young women, and men, has the world or more specifically the UK improved since then?

What do you think 😀

Why does this happen? Young people who run away can find themselves in situations where their options are severely limited, and meeting basic needs like shelter or safety may involve accepting forms of harm, including exploitation by others.

In these circumstances, where the available choices are all risky or harmful in different ways, the issue is less about poor decision making and more about the absence of safe alternatives. Responsibility doesn’t sit solely with the young person but also with the systems and environments that failed to provide a genuinely safe option.

They’re not so much rejecting good choices but rather navigating the least harmful ones available to them. What can look like self-destructive behaviour to an outside observer is often a form of short term problem solving under pressure, where the "best" available option may still involve harm.

Tens of thousands of young people run away or go missing each year, and a smaller but very vulnerable group go missing repeatedly, children in care are disproportionately affected. The true number is likely higher than the official statistics.

Whilst not every pathway involves exploitation, being missing significantly raises the likelihood of encountering or being introduced to situations where power imbalances, dependence or coercion can develop. Vulnerability is not just intrinsic to young people, it can be something that can be produced and intensified by circumstances.

Repeated exposure to risky situations doesn’t just add risk, it tends to compound it. Each episode can increase dependence on unsafe people, acceptability boundaries can get gradually eroded and normalised. Trust in safer adults can decline and the young person may become more visible and accessible to exploiters.

With repeated exposure to harm, a young person’s sense of what is "safe" can change. Strategies that are objectively harmful may come to feel necessary for coping, so that removing them can be experienced as harmful, even when the intention is to protect.

Leading young people to default to familiar, previously effective responses, even when those responses are harmful in the longer term, and so what can look like a preference for harmful behaviour is often a reliance on familiar survival strategies shaped by past experience.

That's it, almost clinically and in a nutshell. I wish these few thoughts on the subject were unique but they're just a rough overview of the current understanding.

^(The articles / text are readable but you may need to save them to your storage.)

Glenthorne YTC Alumni - Charlene Eastwood