To be confused about people's priorities?

[MelonSlice]

Name changed as potentially outing.

I'm on a couple of community Facebook groups for various areas of my country.

Quite often somebody will post about a dog or cat that has gone missing. These types of posts always gain a lot of popularity with various groups going as far as to organise search parties to find these animals.

Recently, there has been a couple of posts about people who have gone missing. One being a 73 year old grandfather with dementia and another being a 35 year old suicidal female. These posts have either been ignored or in the case of the suicidal female, had critical responses about being attention seeking, etc.

Aibu to think people in general have their priorities all wrong to be putting the lives of pets above their human neighbours?

hansard - quick skim looks like the report referenced is the source for these news stories

hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-05-08/debates/1805081000002/ChildrenMissingFromCareHomes

Is that credible enough for you?

"Ministers responded positively to our report and introduced a number of changes in 2013 to try to reduce the number of out-of-area placements, but despite repeated pledges the latest Department for Education figures show that the numbers in placements subject to children’s homes regulations have soared from 2,250 in March 2012 to 3,680 in March 2017—a rise of 64%. They now account for 61% of all children in children’s homes.

At the same time, the number of children going missing from children’s homes out of their area increased by 110% between 2015 and 2017. That compares with a 68% increase in children going missing from children’s homes in their own area. Some 10,700 children went missing from all care placements last year, initiating 60,720 reports, of which 12,200 missing episodes, or one in five, were from placements 20 miles or more from their home address.

On average, children go missing from all care placements six times per year. About 40% of all missing incidents involved a child from a children’s home, despite the fact that they only account for 8% of all looked-after children. It is extremely concerning that nationally about 500 children were missing for more than one month in 2017, and 4,770 were missing for between three and seven days. Children who go missing are at risk of coming to harm and falling prey to grooming by paedophiles for sexual exploitation and by organised crime gangs exploiting them to carry and supply illegal drugs in county lines operations."

Lies lies lies

It must be really nice to read the news and watch TV and anything bad you hear think, oh that's just spin, the authorities have it in hand.

That's how we end up with these periodic massive institutional failings with loads of harm done.

@MenuPlant doesn’t help that the staff cannot physically get the children back. My brother does pick up kicking screaming 14 year olds who want to get into cars with 5 men and wake up the next morning with sore bits and drag them back but he’s been threaten with loosing his job several times.

It must be really nice to read the news and watch TV and anything bad you hear think, oh that's just spin, the authorities have it in hand

I do not think that, at all. Stop assuming you know what I think.

You pick 3 random news articles and present them as fact.

I do not read news articles and take them at gospel truth. I know there will be an angle, an I know there will likely be more to the story. That may be positive, or negative. It’s called critical thinking.

I work directly with these missing children, trying to prevent reoccurrence. It is not as simple as those news articles present. Yes there are serious problems within the care system. Yes a higher proportion of cic go missing. It does not mean no one cares or no one is looking for them. It does not mean that out of area care is not the best option in some cases.

There are too many variables. Some care homes report children missing the minute the walk out the door- they are not allowed to physically stop them. Some don’t report them missing if the child is answering the phone so they know where they are. Some use the police to retrieve children they can’t be arsed or don’t have the resources to get, once a missing report is filed the police are responsible if anything happens to the child.

But hey, i’ll bow to your superior knowledge gained via the internet and those pillars of journalistic responsibility over those who work on the front line.

Anyone can post links. You go try and find those missing children.

I thought you had dismissed the Guardians reporting of the government report out of hand?

You didn't read the links but were happy to dismiss anything they said.

That's not critical thinking that's shoving your head in the sand.

issues with the care system have been reported for years as have the difference in how much priority is given to missing children (care aside) depending on factors like race, class, sex.

Your dismissal of the whole of UK mainstream press, in this case about the care homes, which was a major news story across newspapers and tv when the report came out. I remember it. When all the papers and the telly are reporting on governments findings, it feels weird to say lalala fingers in ears I only believe it if what, I see it with my own eyes.

Apologies you did read them and then dismissed them out of hand and advised me not to trust, well OK the Metro is a bit of a rag but the Indy and the Guardian are OK despite some blind spots..

As it turns out the Guardian was reporting the govt thing accurately from what I can see so it seems shitty to say they are spinning, only telling half the truth, acting on an agenda rather etc

So on the one hand trust no-one on the other hand everything is rosy.

V Trumpian.

It's a knee jerk reaction from a lot of people to dismiss any possibility of bad practice / issues / wrongdoing from the "authorities" and it's a bit of a worry.

Leads to all sorts of awful stuff.

I thought you had dismissed the Guardians reporting of the government report out of hand?

Yes, that is what you thought. I did not dismiss anything "out of hand". I said it wasn't the whole picture. I added a few personal comments, I didn't say anything was untrue.

Papers and the telly can report anything they want. I will still try and corroborate from several sources (as opposed to randomly posting links I've just googled) to try and get a fuller picture, before dismissing or believing anything.

I really don't understand this.

Thread:

Probably reason is missing people have police etc etc to look for them no-one for animals
Me: well you'd hope so but it doesn't always work like that here's some examples (recentish UK care home missing children that was all over the news + phenomenon of effort to find people varying according to various factors)

2 posters:
Your links are rubbish shut up

??

What's the problem, honestly?

If posters are under the impression that missing people are always carefully searched for then that's an impression that is not always true by a long chalk and so I think good to flag it

This links stuff is a distraction.

Why don't you want me telling / linking etc to things that show the authorities fuck up sometimes / or are not as interested as the public at large would assume? For sure there are difficulties but as a starting point many people aren't aware. It's good to be aware, then people can look into it further if they wish.

All I did was link some pretty well known stories (by googling UK care home missing children and missing white girl syndrome) and I'm told off roundly. It's really odd.