Missing People Website

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Adding value

"People from all walks of life go missing for any number of reasons. In the vast majority of cases they return to their normal surroundings soon after their disappearance with no significant harm having befallen them. However, a small percentage of missing persons will have been the victim of foul play or will have met with another tragic end (for example suicide or an accident). It is in the light of this possibility that the police must respond effectively to all reports of missing persons so as to identify those cases which require substantially more attention." [Missing presumed...? The police response to missing persons PRC (Home Office) paper 114 Newiss]

We aim to provide a professional and competent service. Once police officers are aware of what we can offer and ask for help, they tend to come back to us again and again.

Continuous Family Support

We provide practical and emotional support for the family/carer of the missing person. The charity never closes a case until the missing person is located so can provide sustained contact and if necessary long term publicity.

Posters

We can produce 'missing' posters as required. We also have the capability to reproduce these in many foreign languages.

Publicity

While police have access to local media, unless it is a very high profile case they may have trouble contacting media in other areas or nationally. We have very good regular and adhoc media contacts and continue to do publicity long after the initial disappearance.

Due to the many cases we deal with and the priorities we have to assign, we only carry out publicity on high and medium risk cases.

Sightings

We can field sightings and pass on only those we believe from our experience to be worthwhile. Alternatively we can pass on details of every call. We are always prepared to discuss the preferred method - we can save police time and money.

Spanning Force Boundaries

We may be able to help missing person police investigations which span force boundaries, due to our extensive contact with all forces in the UK.

Evidence for prosecution

In missing persons cases which eventually become murder enquiries, but without a body, we can supply evidence of much publicity being done without result. In murder cases where police need to see our case notes, we may require them to obtain a warrant. We have been able to provide crucial information for the prosecution.

Missing Children

We can be of great assistance in these cases, when a child (and children in care – go missing, which can be a strain on police resources. A specialist team of case workers at Missing People are dedicated to working with Children's Services to help them locate children who runaway from care. We mediate between appropriate authorities, attempting to understand the problems and help find solutions.

Where possible a specialist case manager may be able to attend review meetings alongside the police and Children's Services professionals.

Missing Abroad

Where a British national is thought to be missing abroad, we can use our website for publicity. Posters can also be produced in other languages and we can investigate opportunities for generating local media interest.

A 24/7 Freefone number appears on posters and other publicity. This offers another point of contact and the ability to take sightings and information round the clock.