16 year old Peter had a history of frequently going missing.  He was well-known to services but did not trust anyone enough to be able to open up for help.

Peter’s story

The only person Peter will confide in is his St Giles caseworker, with whom he had previously been making positive progress until his parent’s relationship broke down.  This led to more missing episodes and he fell prey to negative influences. Peter was permanently excluded from school after having gone onto school premises with a weapon. He then went missing for a whole month.

Out of the blue, Peter’s caseworker received a call from the police saying that they had located Peter but he would not speak to anyone other than the caseworker.

He travelled to meet Peter who was in a very bad way.  Peter agreed to return home but said he needed to collect a couple of his belongings and would be ready in a couple of hours.  He handed his SIM card to the caseworker to prove that he would return.

Sure enough, Peter was waiting for him as arranged.  When he got into the car, he broke up the SIM card that his caseworker handed back to him. When asked why, he said he wouldn’t need it any longer as it was linked to a county line and he now wanted out of that way of life.

Peter continued to work positively with his caseworker and there have been no more missing episodes.  However, he is not out of the woods yet as things are still far from perfect at home which is affecting his attitude and behaviour.  As a result we have recently further stepped up our support for him, with the goal of keeping him on a positive path and preventing a return to county line exploitation.

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