Leader George Finch faced questions over whether enough focus is being placed on the volume of children who go missing from Warwickshire County Council's care.

On top of being leader Cllr Finch is the portfolio holder for children and families, a post that involves responsibility for child protection and safeguarding, looked-after children, care leavers and child exploitation.

Data reported to the county's Corporate Parenting Panel, a committee chaired by Cllr Finch that oversees the council's work on the children it looks after, showed that 42 of the children taken into the council's care had "experienced missing episodes".

The council typically has between 700 and 800 children in its care at any one time.

It did not stipulate what length of time that covered but noted "multiple repeat incidents" with some children, including one who would return to his mother's home while longer spells missing "tend to involve UASC (unaccompanied asylum seeking children) who arrive in Warwickshire and then disappear", youngsters who are "often linked to exploitation risks".

The January meeting of the panel requested a breakdown of short and long-term missing episodes and historic data so councillors can track spikes or drops. 

Cllr Keith Kondakor questioned Cllr Finch on this at Tuesday's Children and Young People Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

"Sometimes it will only be for a short while, sometimes it might be for days, sometimes we might never see them again," he said.

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"The report said 42 of our children in care went missing in a particular month. We just seem to have a spot figure, we don't have every month.

"What are we doing in this area and are the figures improving, are they getting worse? Do we get a weekly or monthly update?

"I always think that these are the types of indicators of things going wrong and it should be an area for intervention."

Cllr Finch said that he asks for updates "on a regular basis" and works with the relevant professionals on prevention.

"Most of the time it is children (placed) in homes and difficult circumstances that go off," he said.

"Most of the time we do contact the police and so on to work with them to find out where they are, and they do come back with us after a short time.

"The safety of children is very important to me and the administration."

Cllr Kondakor said that the phrase "most are found" was "not reassuring" and asked again about the data.

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"I want to know you are on top of your brief and that you're looking at the numbers, (whether) we're stable, getting worse or getting better," he said.

Cllr Finch explained that the circumstances around children being in care can result in the figures being fluid.

"When children do leave, we don't know the exact times they are leaving all the time because some of them are found pretty quickly, some take a few days to find," he continued. 

"I am sure the officers do work with external partners like the police, safeguarding and other advocacy services to make sure children are found as quickly as possible and that their parents, carers and family members are reassured.

"I am confident that we do work on that very closely, the officers are working fabulously on making sure those communications are better as well."

Cllr Kondakor remarked that he was "not reassured because you don't seem to be looking at the figures" and later asked officers for more detail.

Director of children and young people Sharon Shaw said that the overall volume of Warwickshire children going missing – not just those in care – had gone down by 10 per cent last year. 

Data from the past week showed all 12 children who went missing had been found but she explained that "they may have gone missing again".

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"It was something like 30 episodes from 12 young people – 80 per cent of those are young males, sort of 15, 16," she said. 

"Every young person who goes missing is offered a meeting with a missing practitioner when they return because we want to understand why they are going missing, what the risks are.

"There are always a variety of reasons. We know some of them are with family, some of those young people are at risk of exploitation and we are really concerned about that, but the number is going down and we have a really strong team that supports these young people.

"It sounds awful to say but the young people who go missing are not surprising to us, they are the young people that we are concerned about and actively working with."