One In Four Kids Could Be Runaways: Tech Industry Responds

Tech giants including HP, Microsoft and Dell are fielding teams to sleep rough to raise money for child homelessness charity Action For Children – which reports that one in four children are potential runaways.

The annual Byte Night fundraising event aims to beat its previous record sum of more than £1 million. Thousands of volunteers will sleep rough on 3 October, to raise money to support Action For Children’s work with young homeless people – and registration is now open.

A byte at the problem

More than one in four (27 per cent) children in the UK have thought about running away – with half of them admitting to spending a night away from home without telling their parents, according to Action for Children’s research.

Half the children who ran off had argued with their families and 42 percent thought their parents didn’t want them and would be better off without them, according to the survey of 1000 eight to 16-year-olds.

“Homelessness can happen to anyone’s child,”  said Sir Tony Hawkhead, chief executive of Action for Children. “Our research shows that children as young as eight think about running away – and more than one in 10 go through with it. These are ordinary children from ordinary families who are struggling to deal with what can often be very ordinary problems. We want to help these families repair broken relationships before the idea of running away becomes the reality of a night on the streets.”

Teams from Microsoft, HP, Dell and IBM and LinkedIn are taking part, along with RBS, EY and Deloitte. TechWeek will be there are usual also.

To find out about taking part in Byte Night, email bytenight@actionforchildren.org.uk or visit bytenight.org.uk. To donate to Action for Children’s youth homelessness services, please text BYTE14 £ and the amount to 70070.

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