While politicians debate youth minimum wage increases, a different crisis affecting Britain's youngest has been quietly exploding in family courts across the country. In 2023, judges issued 930 orders demanding information about missing children — a staggering leap from just one such order the previous year.

The figures, buried in Ministry of Justice statistics, tell the story of a child protection system under unprecedented strain. In 2022, family courts issued exactly one 'authority to obtain information on missing child' order. Twelve months later, that number had rocketed to nearly a thousand — an increase of 92,900%.

This isn't just a statistical blip. Each order represents a child whose whereabouts are unknown, triggering legal action to force organisations, schools, or individuals to provide information about where they might be. The paperwork trail reveals a system frantically trying to locate children who have vanished from official oversight.

The timeline tells a troubling story. For years, these orders barely registered in court statistics. The system ticked along with minimal intervention — until something changed dramatically in 2023. Whether driven by post-COVID social disruption, families in crisis, or simply better reporting mechanisms, the data shows child welfare authorities scrambling to find nearly a thousand missing children.

What makes this surge particularly striking is its timing. As the government focuses on economic measures like wage policy, the hidden machinery of child protection has been working overtime. Each of those 930 orders required court time, legal representation, and administrative resources — costs that ultimately fall to taxpayers.

The numbers suggest this isn't a London phenomenon or regional hotspot, but a national pattern requiring systematic intervention. Family courts don't issue these orders lightly — they represent children who have disappeared from the radar of social services, schools, or family networks entirely.

For context, this represents nearly three missing child orders every single day of 2023. Behind each statistic is a child whose safety and wellbeing prompted urgent legal intervention to track them down. The explosion from one to 930 cases suggests either a genuine crisis in child welfare or a dramatic change in how authorities respond to missing children.

The Ministry of Justice data offers no explanation for the surge, but the timeline is clear: something fundamental shifted between 2022 and 2023 in how Britain tracks and responds to missing children. Whatever caused this explosion, it's costing taxpayers significantly more in court time and legal processes than anyone budgeted for.