Why Do Finnish Children Abscond from Out-of-Home Care?

Abstract

Absconding is a widespread issue in out-of-home care causing significant risk for the children who abscond, such as being sexually exploited or participating in other harmful behaviours like using illegal substances (Courtney et al., 2005; Biehal & Wade, 1999). Statistic from Finland has shown that children who abscond from their out-of-home care placement do so multiple times, alas the issues behind absconding are not being remedied once they do return (Isoniemi, 2019). Previous research on the subject has shown that children who abscond do so to either run “away” from something or run “to” something (Crosland and Dunlap, 2015; Crosland et al., 2018). These categories have been developed by classifying the reasons children give for absconding. The factors in the “to” category most commonly involve accessing people whom children are attached to or hobbies. Factors in the “away” category, in turn, commonly involve absconding from a disliked environment, or people. The current study’s aim is to examine whether Finnish children who abscond do so to either to run “away” or to run “to” something. Furthermore, another objective was to uncover whether the same risk factors discovered in previous research i.e., age, gender and substance abuse would be seen in the current study. The present study uses pre-existing data from a Finnish study to analyse the reasons behind absconding. Participants (N=112) completed a questionnaire regarding absconding. A repeated measures ANOVA was used to determine whether Finnish children who abscond from out-of-home care do so to run “to” or to run “away” from something. A third variable, “mood,” was included since it could not be categorised in “to” or “away.” Furthermore, a multiple regression analysis was utilised to determine whether age, gender and substance abuse issues were risk factors for absconding. Children reported that they were most likely to abscond because of “mood.” After excluding this factor for its ambiguous nature, it was most probable for children to run “to” something rather than “away.” Furthermore, substance abuse issues were found to be associated with absconding. To conclude, Finnish children who abscond are more likely to be motivated to abscond to gain access to people or activities that that are not accessible in their out-of-home care placement, in addition to being more likely to use substances, such as drugs or alcohol, in comparison to children who do not abscond.