Northern Territory and Western Australia police have launched a new search and rescue program, focused on supporting people living with cognitive impairments who might be at risk of going missing. The safe and found program ensures police have immediate access to critical information when undertaking search operations, through the use of an online database.
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TVTranscript
00:00Behind me is a sample of the police resources needed for when someone goes missing in the
00:07Northern Territory and one of the biggest roadblocks to finding missing people can be
00:12that sometimes police don't have the information about where they might be, what they might
00:17look like and they're trying to get this information from families in times of significant distress
00:23for those families. So this new Safe and Found program aims to connect police with families
00:30before their loved ones go missing if they have some kind of high risk situation which
00:36means they might end up lost. For example, it's for people with dementia or people who
00:42might be autistic or have a cognitive impairment and may be non-verbal. It means that loved
00:47ones can upload their information about a person to a database run by MedicAlert which
00:55will be sent on to police automatically when they go missing. The person who is lost can
01:02also get this medical bracelet which has the contact details for that person on it so that
01:08in case a member of the public finds them, they know exactly where to find this person.
01:14Now the system's already in place in Western Australia where it's been used to cut down
01:19the time it takes for people to find missing people in WA but now the program is being
01:25launched in the Northern Territory, it's hoped that more people will sign up here and it'll
01:30be especially handy in remote communities where people might not have English as a first
01:35language and might speak a number of Aboriginal languages at home. The sign up fee for the
01:42program is $150, now it is a charity and there are concessions available through things
01:47like the NDIS and the Department of Veterans Affairs and aged care packages. So police
01:54are really hoping to see more people sign up throughout the Territory to cut down their
01:58missing persons load. We know that currently around 60 people go missing in the Northern
02:03Territory each year. Just a recent while ago we had a 7-year-old boy who was found safely
02:09thankfully after going missing and he was non-verbal and police say that in that situation
02:15something like this could have helped.