The Home Secretary has announced that the Government will accept in full the recommendations of the Missing Persons Taskforce established in December 2009 to examine how the police, councils and other agencies respond when people have been reported missing. http://bit.ly/aCuWdK
 
This political impetus will be welcomed by practitioners. This is an area where finite operational capacity, lack of training and poor information sharing can result in inappropriate response. All agencies concerned accept that anything short of a full and thorough response will only serve to exacerbate the risk to already vulnerable individuals.
 
However, unless investment is made, this just becomes yet another Government report with noble statements about the need for joined up working.
 
Report after report tells of the need to share information and, although no one is disagreeing, lack of investment means that progress is painfully slow. The Missing Persons Taskforce flavour of this message is the need to establish a national model of information-sharing between the agencies.
 
The challenge is putting this into action. We have the political will, the agreement of agencies and the necessary technologies for safe information sharing.  Let’s hope that lack of investment won’t prove to be the overriding obstacle to implementation.