13/08/2026
Yesterday,
It was the solar eclipse. Hear us out we know it's been everywhere and back by now but we wanted to touch on a few things and develop into the picture below. So stay with us.
In a solar eclipse a child or young person can go missing in a matter of SECONDS!!!
This is because of environmental factors such as:
Sudden darkness and ambient light changes:
As darkness lowers visibility very quickly, it makes it harder to spot a child or young person.
Attention of adults:
As the attention of adults is diverted as this given time as they are looking at the sky through various viewing methods, an adult can lose track of a child's movement even for just a few seconds.
Crowds and noise element:
As the eclipse was viewed in public areas such as parks. These are often busy and chaotic and can easily overwhelm a child or young person, which can lead to them wandering off and lost in a sea of people.
If any of these happen here are four things to do:
Call 999 immediately and report the child as missing. There is no waiting period when a child is missing.
Search the immediate/high risk areas first especially near open water.
Alert the crowd management straight away.
Assign roles to look for the child or young person.
Now let's talk about the picture below. If you look closely, you can see a map of the UK behind us.
County lines and CCE are different as they are a gradual process that happen over weeks or months.
Set up/targeting - this stage can happen online through social media, gaming or in public spaces, such as outside schools, youth clubs, sports grounds or parks. At this time trust is built, through buying gifts, food and status.
The 'Trap line'/ 'running' phase - once the child or young person has been coerced into this, they are now trapped in debt bo***ge. Normally along the lines of 'you owe me'. This child or young person has now been sent to sell drugs, weapons or cash to a different town/city or county with virtually NO CHOICE!!!
Disappearance - this child or young person, now hasn't been seen or heard from in days or even sometimes weeks. It starts to become more frequent and can start from an hour every day, and progress to days and weeks at a time. By this time the child or young person is just about surviving in an unsafe, unsanitry environment, until they are then allowed to come home or be found.
Like with the solar eclipse a child or young person is often scared. They're scared for them, scared for their families, scared because of what will happen in the near future to them.
They have all these questions going through their mind such as:
Will I go to prison?
Will my family be okay?
Will I be okay?
How do I tell people what has happened?
Do I understand what has happened?
How could this happen?
Should I have trusted that person/people?
As adults we have to be there to listen to what children and young people are saying, reassure them, hear and understand all while being calm.
