How to report a missing child

Is Your Child Missing?

Overview What to do if your child is missing How NCMEC can help Resources

Act immediately if you believe your child is missing.

Download this checklist of actions to be taken by families in the initial stages of a missing child case. If you have any questions call the NCMEC at 1-800-THE-LOST^® (1-800-843-5678). If you are not located in the United States, call your country's hotline.

What to do if your child is missing

Immediately call your local law enforcement agency.
After you have reported your child missing to law enforcement, call the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST^® (1-800-843-5678).
If your child is missing from home, search through:
- Closets.
- Piles of laundry.
- In and under beds.
- Inside large appliances.
- Vehicles – including trunks.
- Anywhere else that a child may crawl or hide.

Notify the store manager or security office if your child cannot be found when in a store. Then immediately call your local law enforcement agency. Many stores have a Code Adam plan of action in place.
When you call law enforcement
- Provide law enforcement with your child’s name, date of birth, height, weight, and descriptions of any other unique identifiers such as eyeglasses and braces. Tell them when you noticed your child was missing and what clothing he or she was wearing.
- Request law enforcement authorities immediately enter your child’s name and identifying information into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center Missing Person File.

How NCMEC can help

When you call NCMEC, a Call Center specialist will record information about your child. A NCMEC case management team will next work directly with your family and the law enforcement agency investigating your case. They will offer technical assistance tailored to your case to help ensure all available search and recovery methods are used.

As appropriate NCMEC case management teams:

Rapidly create and disseminate posters to help generate leads.
Rapidly review, analyze and disseminate leads received on 1-800-THE-LOST^® (1-800-843-5678) to the investigating law enforcement agency.
Communicate with federal agencies to provide services to assist in the location and recovery of missing children.
Provide peer support, resources and empowerment from trained volunteers who have experienced a missing child incident in their own family.
Provide families with access to referrals they may use to help process any emotional or counseling needs.

Resources

Missing Child Emergency Response - Quick Reference Guide

English

Español

When Your Child is Missing: A Family Survival Guide

English

Español

If Your Child is Missing

English

What to Do if Your Child Goes Missing

What to Do if Your Child Goes Missing

Taking action as soon as you realize your child is missing is critical to bringing them home safely. Here are five things to do if your child ever goes missing.

1. Call the Police Immediately

Before doing anything else, contact your local police immediately. You might have heard that you need to wait 24 hours before reporting a missing person, but the waiting period is a myth. In fact, taking action within the first 48 hours is crucial to bringing a missing child home.

When speaking with police, you will be asked to provide basic information about your child, including their date of birth, height, weight, hair color, and eye color. Tell them any identifying features that your child may have, such as scars, birthmarks, braces, or eyeglasses, and share any medical circumstances that your child may have. They will also need to know where and when your child was last seen, and what clothes they were wearing at that time. Find a recent photo of your child to give to the police and make copies for local police, the media, and missing children’s organizations.

Having your child’s vital information, medical records, and recent photos on hand makes a tremendous difference in emergencies—both for you and for law enforcement. If you don’t have a system in place already for storing your child’s identifying information, consider ordering a Docupak from Child Find of America.

2. Ask Police to Enter Your Child Into the NCIC

The FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) is an electronic clearinghouse of data that can be accessed by virtually any criminal justice agency. It is an essential tool in locating missing persons. Ask your local police to enter you child’s name and information into the NCIC Missing Person File (also known as filing a Missing Child Report) and obtain the name and contact number of the officer assigned to your case. Child Find includes NCIC numbers in the missing children posters we create so that any sightings of or tips about your child can be instantly linked to your child’s case. If you decide to create your own missing posters or images, don’t forget to include your child’s NCIC number.

Remember, there is no waiting period for reporting a child missing or for entry into NCIC.

3. Search and Secure Your Home

Small children have been known to go temporarily missing from parents in their own homes. Carefully look inside closets and cabinets, under beds, behind furniture and large appliances, and in their favorite hide-and-seek places. If relevant, search under vehicles, decks, or porches, and in outdoor play areas.

If your child was not found in your home, secure your home and limit family and friends’ access if they are assisting in your search. Law enforcement may find clues to your child’s whereabouts in your home so do your best not to disrupt anything, especially in your child’s room and/or play area.

4. Call Child Find of America

You don’t have to search for your child alone. When you open a missing child case with Child Find, you will be connected with an experienced caseworker who will coordinate efforts with law enforcement and allied agencies so you don’t have to. Your caseworker will be available every step of the way to answer any questions you may have and share resources and/or referrals to state agencies. You can contact a Child Find caseworker at 1-800-I-AM-LOST.

After opening your case, your caseworker will ask if you’d like Child Find to create a missing child poster. We share missing children posters with our national media partners and via social media to raise awareness and expand the network of those searching for your child.

5. Practice Self-Care

Although it can feel impossible to remain calm in these types of situations, maintaining your composure is the best thing you can do to bring your child home. Your caseworker and local law enforcement need you for their investigation so they can bring your child home safely.

If you find yourself struggling, let your Child Find caseworker know; in addition to location services, they are trained in providing emotional support and guidance to parents of missing children.

What to do if your child is missing

Together with the TASS news agency, we tell you what to do if your child is missing: there is not a minute to lose.

Where to go?

The parent, guardian or legal representative of the child must immediately report the loss by filing a police report or calling 112 (the unified emergency number).

Important: there is a misconception that you have to wait three days from the moment of the disappearance of a person in order to file a complaint with the police. Contact immediately - the duty officer does not have the right to refuse to accept your application.

If the missing person is found on his own in a couple of hours, no one will fine you, and the probability of finding a child, and even an adult who finds himself in a difficult situation, is much higher if you start looking for him immediately.

What to tell the police?

Take with you to the department documents proving your identity, if possible, documents of the child. Tell us about the special signs and clothes of the missing person, bring his photographs, give the number of his mobile phone or tablet.

If the child's gadget is issued not to the parents, but to a third party, his statement of consent is also required.

Search and Rescue Squad "Lisa Alert" recommends that you take the contacts of the employee who will deal with your case in order to quickly contact him if the missing person returns home or new information appears about him.

What will the police do?

Police officers will issue a decision to start operational search activities using geolocation. This means that the police will be able to obtain information about the latest calls from the minor's phone and the location of the gadget. The police will notify the court of the start of the operation. Within 48 hours from the start of the search, law enforcement officers will be required to obtain court permission to use the gadget in the search.

“The court will refuse only in exceptional, rare cases, if the procedure for starting the search for a missing child is violated - for example, there is no statement from parents or other legal representatives, or the child was found before consideration of the decision of the body of inquiry in court. This procedure is regulated by the law on operational-investigative activities,” explained Vasily Piskarev, Chairman of the Committee on Security and Anti-Corruption. Piskarev
Vasily Ivanovich Deputy of the State Duma elected as part of the federal list of candidates nominated by the All-Russian political party "UNITED RUSSIA" .

Prior to the entry into force of the law to simplify the search for missing children, the police did not have the right to use the data from the child's phone until a court decision. There is no opportunity to use the geolocation of gadgets when searching for adults even now.

Who else can help?

Assistance to law enforcement agencies in the search for missing persons is successfully provided by the volunteer detachments "Search for missing children" (8-499-686-02-01, around the clock) and "Lisa Alert" (8-800-700-54-52, around the clock ). They can also provide broad informational support and psychological assistance.

Such organizations will never ask you for money and require you to file a police report first.

What should parents do?

Lisa Alert advises a thorough search of the house and surroundings, as the child may have hidden or fallen asleep in the closet, in the attic, under the bed, or in some other secluded place.

Call the child's friends and relatives, they may have the information you need.

Searching for a child on your own using social media posts can be a waste of time. “Psychics will call, false employees of anything and offer their services for money, assuring that they know exactly where the child is,” explains the coordinator of the Lisa Alert search and rescue team, senior in the Education and Forest in touch" Oleg Leonov.

The same applies to posting ads around the city with a photo of a child. However, if the orientations are compiled by a search organization or the police, and they contain the contacts of these organizations, then your help in distribution will only be welcome.

What can be done to minimize the risk of such a situation?

Your child needs to know their name, age and home address. Put a business card with your phone number, address, and the numbers of your family and friends in an inside pocket of your clothes in case your phone is unavailable.

Teach your child how to use a mobile phone. The contact list should contain not only the phone numbers of parents and relatives, but also educators, teachers and other adults you trust.

Oleg Leonov advises to install a special application on the child's phone in advance or activate a service from an operator, for example, MTS Search, Beeline.Locator, MegaFon Radar. Then you will know where your child is at any time.

Be sure to tell your child what to do if they get lost. Explain that no one will scold him for this - children are often afraid of the reaction of adults, and therefore they may be confused or decide not to get in touch.

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The principle of five minutes. What to do if a child is missing

Society

Vsluh.ru

May 26, 2021, 13:27

This year, the Tyumen police received 62 reports of missing children, 45 missing children were found on the first day. On average, children in Tyumen get lost every 2-3 days. 95% of missing children leave home or school voluntarily, these are the statistics of the regional department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. What to do if a child goes missing and how the police and volunteers work in such cases, they told in the Evening Hashtag program on the Tyumen Time channel.

It is necessary to file a missing child report with the police immediately - there is no "three days" rule. You can contact the nearest department or call 102/112.

“I encourage parents to use the five-minute principle. You have five minutes to figure it out, call people, but if after this time you have not found any clues, you need to file a complaint with the police and only then continue your actions. In the search for children, the most important thing is time, this factor can play a fatal role, ”said Andrey Kramarsky, chairman of the Tyumen regional public organization For Safe Childhood.

If necessary, search teams of volunteers are involved, they start working only after the parents have filed a complaint with the police. The police invite volunteers if there is a suspicion that a child has been the victim of a crime, is in a dangerous situation, or needs medical attention.

After receiving the application, the operational officer draws up a detailed orientation, which is sent to all internal affairs bodies of the Tyumen Region or adjacent regions. A photograph of a child is placed in artificial intelligence, which can identify the missing person from CCTV cameras in the city. With the help of the Safe City system, many missing people were found.

“An interdepartmental investigation team immediately leaves for the place where the child left or where he was last seen. Significant forces and means are involved in the search, an inspection is being carried out, work is being done to determine the whereabouts of the missing person, ”the RF Investigative Committee for the Tyumen Region said.

According to the psychologist, in order to prevent loss, parents need to conduct preventive conversations with their child. The main rule: a stranger will not just approach. It is advised to instill this knowledge in a child from early childhood, but it is impossible to intimidate. The psychologist considers the existence of trust between the child and the parent to be important.