The government celebrated hitting a record January budget surplus this week, boasting about higher tax receipts. But buried in the Ministry of Justice data is a statistic that shows the human cost of Britain's struggling families: orders to obtain information on missing children have exploded by 92,900% in a single year.

In 2022, family courts issued just one such order. By 2023, that number had rocketed to 930. These aren't academic statistics. Each order represents a child whose whereabouts are unknown to the authorities trying to protect them.

The timeline tells a stark story. For years, these information orders were rare. The family court system operated on the assumption that parents, social services, and schools could track children without judicial intervention. That assumption has clearly broken down.

What changed? The cost-of-living crisis hit families hard in 2022 and 2023. Housing became unaffordable, forcing frequent moves. Benefits delays left families in limbo. School attendance dropped as parents juggled multiple jobs or struggled with mental health. Children started falling through the cracks.

The surge coincides with other warning signs in the family court data. Care proceedings have risen steadily. Emergency protection orders are up. The entire child protection system is under strain, and these missing child orders are the canary in the coal mine.

Each order costs taxpayers money. Court time, legal fees, administrative costs. But more importantly, each one represents a failure to keep track of vulnerable children before they disappeared from the system entirely.

The Ministry of Justice publishes this data quarterly, but the 92,900% jump appears to have gone unnoticed amid other family court statistics. While politicians count tax receipts, social workers are scrambling to find nearly a thousand children who've vanished from official records.

This isn't just about numbers on a spreadsheet. When authorities need a court order to find basic information about a child's whereabouts, it means every other system has already failed. The school doesn't know where they are. Social services lost track. Even the parents can't be reached.

The government talks about efficiency and fiscal responsibility. But what's efficient about letting child protection deteriorate to the point where courts must issue 930 information orders in a single year, up from virtually none just 12 months earlier?

(Source: Ministry of Justice, Family Court Statistics -- Family_Court_Tables__Jul-Sep_2024_ -- Table_4)