Missing and Lost: Missing Children, Social Harm and Structural Violence
- Wednesday 22 October 2025
- 13:00 - 14:00
- This event has passed
Join us for the third webinar in our ExChange Wales conference series on the criminal exploitation of children, with Dr Paul Andell, exploring how social inequalities, race, class, and gender intersect to compound marginalisation, leading children to become not only physically ‘missing’ but institutionally ‘lost.’
Speaker
Dr Paul Andell
Associate Professor, University of Suffolk
In this webinar Dr Paul Andell will discuss the phenomenon of children going missing from care, situating these experiences within wider frameworks of structural violence, social harm, and institutional neglect. Drawing on personal reflections, policy analysis, case studies, and recent qualitative research, the presenter suggests that episodes of missing children are not isolated events but symptoms of systemic failure.
Children in care are disproportionately vulnerable to criminal and sexual exploitation, often misrecognised as offenders rather than safeguarded as victims. The webinar will explore how social inequalities, race, class, and gender intersect to compound marginalisation, leading children to become not only physically ‘missing’ but institutionally ‘lost.’
Accounts from frontline practitioners highlight the limitations of fragmented, risk-averse systems and the contradictions faced by residential staff. The presenter calls for trauma-informed, relationship-based, and structurally aware safeguarding practices that prioritise protection, equity, and systemic reform over procedural compliance.
Note: This webinar is based on a chapter Dr Andell has recently written for a new book, Legacies of the Lost in Criminology, edited by Tammy Ayres, Daniel Briggs, Craig Kelly and Stuart Taylor, due to be published in April 2026 by Bristol University Press.