While MPs debate delaying youth minimum wage increases, Britain's family courts are drowning in a crisis that started with a single missing child case and exploded into nearly a thousand.

In 2022, family courts issued exactly one 'Authority to obtain information on missing child' order. Last year, that number hit 930 — a staggering 92,900% increase that reveals how quickly the system can buckle under pressure (Source: Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics -- Family_Court_Tables__Jul-Sep_2024_ -- Table_4).

The timeline tells the story of a system in freefall. Whatever changed between 2022 and 2023 wasn't gradual — it was seismic. These aren't routine custody disputes. These are emergency interventions when children vanish from the system entirely, and courts need extraordinary powers to track them down.

Each order costs taxpayers money. Court time, administrative processing, enforcement action — multiply that by 930 cases and you're looking at serious public spending on what should be preventable crises. The Ministry of Justice doesn't publish the per-case cost, but with senior judges earning £180,000 annually and court hearings running hundreds of pounds per hour, this surge represents a hidden drain on already-stretched budgets.

The explosion coincides with broader strains across children's services. Social services departments nationwide report record caseloads, with some workers managing 40+ cases each — well above recommended limits. When the front line fails, courts become the last resort.

What triggered the surge? The data doesn't explain, but the timing suggests a perfect storm. Post-COVID disruption to family services, cost-of-living pressures forcing families into crisis, and cuts to early intervention programmes all converged in 2023. The result: 929 more children went missing from official oversight than the year before.

Westminster's focus on youth employment policy feels disconnected from this reality. While politicians debate wage floors, family courts are issuing emergency orders at unprecedented rates to find children who've fallen through cracks in the system.

The bureaucratic language — 'Authority to obtain information' — obscures what's actually happening. These are warrants to compel schools, hospitals, benefits offices, anyone who might know where a missing child has gone. They're deployed when normal channels fail completely.

By 2023's end, nearly 1,000 children had triggered the most serious intervention family courts can make. Each case represents a family in crisis, a system failure, and a cost to taxpayers that multiplied almost overnight.

The question isn't whether this surge will continue — it's whether anyone in Westminster is paying attention to the numbers that matter most.