Saskatoon’s Board of Police Commissioners were presented with the latest numbers regarding missing people in the community. And again, a large majority are attributable not only to runaways but habitual runaways.

Two newly formed focus groups include a Youth Committee, created by Egadz, from their Operation Runaway program. The youth committee has provided suggestions as to what these young people need in order to prevent them from running away from their group or foster home. This Host Home group is ramping up its efforts to provide extra support in times when the young people affected need stabilization.

The second focus group was formed after determining a definition for a missing youth versus a habitual run-away youth. With that in mind, risk assessment of youth as a tool is being used prior to reporting them missing to the Saskatoon Police Service. Consequently, after 68 risk assessments to date, 26 of those were not called in as missing.

The Saskatoon Police Service has received 1693 missing person reports betwen April first and September 30th this year. Of those, 1346 were youth, 283 adults and 64 missing eloped persons. Of the missing youth, 867 instances involved girls. 810 of those were considered habitual runaways or missing persons. Of the 810,10 girls, all living in group and foster care homes, made up 222 of the occurrences while one girl in particular generated 27 missing person reports.

In the same time frame, there were 479 cases of boys going missing with most of those – 427 – being considered habitual. Again,10 boys living in group and foster care homes account for more than half the calls for services. Two of those boys account for 39 and 35 of the calls respectively.

In total for the time period specified, adults account for 20 per cent of total missing person reports. There are 17 Historic Missing Persons dating back to 1953.