In 2022, family courts issued exactly one order compelling someone to provide information about a missing child. By 2023, that number had exploded to 930 orders. The increase represents a staggering jump that nobody saw coming.

These aren't your typical custody disputes. When a family court issues an 'authority to obtain information on missing child' order, it means a child has vanished and the court needs to force someone to reveal what they know. It's the legal system's emergency button when children disappear.

The timeline tells a disturbing story. For years, these orders barely registered in family court statistics. Single digits were the norm. Then something changed dramatically in 2023.

The surge coincides with a broader crisis in child protection services across England and Wales. Social services departments are overwhelmed, court backlogs stretch for months, and families are fracturing under financial pressure. When systems fail, children slip through the cracks.

Each of those 930 orders represents a child whose whereabouts became unknown to authorities. Some might be with estranged relatives who won't cooperate with social services. Others could be caught in international custody disputes where parents flee abroad. The bleakest possibility is children who've been trafficked or exploited.

The numbers suggest family courts are now routinely dealing with scenarios that used to be rare emergencies. When one order becomes nearly a thousand, it's not just a statistical anomaly. It's evidence of systemic breakdown.

What changed in 2023? The cost-of-living crisis hit families hard, but that alone doesn't explain children going missing. More likely, it's the cumulative effect of years of cuts to support services, combined with courts finally recognising they need legal tools to track down vanished children.

The increase also reflects better data collection. Courts may have always dealt with missing children, but without proper recording systems, these cases remained invisible in official statistics. The jump from one to 930 could partly represent bureaucracy catching up with reality.

Yet even accounting for improved record-keeping, the scale is alarming. Nearly a thousand children were missing enough that family courts had to issue legal orders just to find out where they were. That's more than two children every working day of the year.

Behind each order lies a family in crisis, a child whose safety is uncertain, and a system scrambling to piece together what went wrong. The 92,900% increase isn't just a number. It's a warning sign flashing red in Britain's family courts.