How a Milton Keynes holiday club rebuilt its headcounts after a child went missing on a trip

Hannah Okafor runs Lakeside Explorers Holiday Club from a primary school in Bletchley, Milton Keynes: up to 64 children a day aged five to 12, nine staff, every school holiday and two coach trips a week in summer. On a Thursday in August 2024, an eight-year-old went missing at a country park for 23 minutes, and the register that would have told staff what he was wearing was on a clipboard in the minibus.

Where the club started

Hannah worked as a teaching assistant in Milton Keynes for six years and started Lakeside Explorers in 2019 with 20 children a day over the summer. By 2024 the club ran every school holiday, registered with Ofsted, with a waiting list for August.

Days run 8am to 6pm. In summer, Tuesdays and Thursdays are trip days: a coach to a farm, a country park, a museum or a swimming pool. The club works in four colour groups of up to 16, each with two adults and a floating ninth member of staff.

• The register was a printed sheet per group, ticked at 8am and at collection.
• On trips, staff counted children twice: getting on the coach and getting off it at the end.
• Named collectors lived on paper booking forms in a box file at the school office.
• The club had a lost child procedure, as Ofsted requires. Nobody on the team could say what was in it.

What happened at the country park?

The Green group was at a splash area. One boy, who we will call Leo, wanted an ice cream and walked off towards the café by the car park, about 300 metres away. Nobody saw him go.

A member of staff noticed eight minutes later. All four adults from two groups went looking, leaving 18 children with one adult at the splash area. Nobody knew what Leo was wearing because the register was on the coach. His mother was phoned at minute 19. Nobody called the police. A park ranger found Leo at the café at minute 23, holding a £2 coin and very pleased with himself.

Hannah wrote the incident up that evening. The list of what went wrong ran to a page and a half.

"We had a procedure in a folder. Nobody read it, so nobody followed it. Four adults ran around a car park while one stood with 18 children, and we never phoned the police because we kept thinking he would turn up in the next minute."

What Lakeside Explorers set up in Bitir

Hannah rewrote the procedure over the autumn half-term with her two senior staff, Danny and Mei, using the steps in our guide to a missing child procedure for clubs and classes and the requirements of the EYFS statutory framework. The new setup went live for Easter 2025.

1. A one-page procedure on every lanyard. One adult stays with the group and recounts. Register checked at minute one. Named places searched. Parent called by minute five. 999 at minute ten, or immediately near water, a road or a site exit.
2. Registers on every group lead's phone. Sign-in and sign-out happen in Bitir, and a child can only be signed out to an adult on their named collector list, shown with a photo on the child's member record to that group's managers.
3. A headcount at every transition. On trip days that is nine recorded counts, each taken as an attendance session: leaving school, boarding, arriving, before and after lunch, activity changes, leaving, arriving back and collection.
4. A morning photo of each group in that day's clothes and colour T-shirts, posted to a staff-only channel and deleted at the end of the block.
5. A timed drill on the first morning of every holiday block, with a named cone hidden somewhere on site.

Trips also got fixed buddy pairs and a rule that no adult leaves their own group to search. The floating member of staff searches, with venue staff.

What changed in the numbers?

Hannah compared summer 2024 with summer 2025, the first full summer under the new setup.

The one case in summer 2025 was a six-year-old at a museum, found in the toilets after four minutes. Her father had been called at minute three. He told Hannah the call was the reason he booked the October half-term.

The four wrong releases in 2024 were all relatives collecting early through the school office. With collectors on the child's record, the office now checks the list on a phone and calls the parent if the name is not there.

"The first drill took six and a half minutes, and that was with nobody frightened. Now the register is in their hand, they know who stays and who goes, and the parent is on the phone before anyone has had time to panic."

What Hannah does in Bitir

• Attendance registers for sign-in, sign-out and every transition headcount, on each group lead's phone.
• Member profiles with each child's photo and named collectors, visible only to their group's managers.
• A staff-only channel for the morning group photos and the incident record.
• Group channels that tell parents about any incident the same day, from the club rather than a personal number.
• Roles that make each colour group's two adults its managers, with the floating staff member covering all four.
• Dated tasks for the drill at the start of every holiday block.

What she would tell another club

• Ask your team what is in your procedure. If nobody can say, it does not exist.
• Count at every transition, not just on and off the coach.
• Call the parent early. The embarrassment of a false alarm lasts an afternoon.
• Never leave a group to search. Pick one person whose job is searching.
• Run the drill. It is the only way to find out how long minute one takes.

What's next

For summer 2026 Hannah is adding wristbands with the club's phone number for the under-eights on trip days, paid from a £240 grant from a Milton Keynes community fund. She also plans to share the procedure with the three venues the club visits most, so their staff know the club's steps before the coach arrives.

Related reading: missing child procedure for clubs and classes, and organising a group trip: consent, payment and headcount.