As a teenager, Chereece Bateson was going missing so often that even police struggled to keep track. In one month alone, she disappeared 27 times. She was living in care, “barely eating”, surviving off food banks, and felt safer on the streets than inside the places that were meant to protect her. Now 24, she looks back on that period as a time when she had “no home, no safety, no control” – and almost no one to turn to.
