I have over 20 years' experience working in children's social care including specialist experience working with children in care, children at risk of or experiencing exploitation, serious youth violence and missing children. I will be exploring responses to children and young people who go missing from care, particularly those who go missing regularly and the over-representation of black children in missing episodes.

I have been frustrated by the outdated and risk-averse approaches we use and I believe we can respond more effectively so that children feel supported and listened to and can trust the adults around them. I will be learning from colleagues in Canada, Norway and Finland, looking at their trauma-informed and holistic approaches with a plan to devise a blueprint for services to work more effectively with these children and young people in the future.

I intend to share my learning with partners in the UK to start conversations and review policy in order that we can work more collaboratively with children, keeping them at the centre of planning to reduce the frequency and impact of missing episodes on children's lives.