Introduction: Prevention, Location, Education, and Support

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What’s the issue?

Every year over 30,000 Australians are reported missing – that’s one every 18 minutes. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. Many go missing but are not reported. Although almost everyone reported to police is located, often within hours, several hundred Australians are missing for more than 12 months. People go missing for many different and complex reasons. Those issues are difficult to address. One-third go missing again, often under similar circumstances. For every one person missing, over 12 family members and friends are affected. It costs the Australian community at least $72 million each year to locate missing people and address the effects on others.

What is needed is a national and coordinated response addressing prevention, location, education and support. PLEaS provides that response.

Prevention reduces the incidence of missing persons and its consequences, promoting and enhancing a safer society for all Australians.

Location recognises the critical need to find the missing people as quickly as possible to reduce the impact on families and friends and the missing people themselves.

Education increases awareness about missing person issues to minimise the incidence, enhance the responses and encourage a collaborative approach.

Support minimises the trauma suffered by the missing people, family, friends and the effect on the community.

Why help?

By working together, we can prevent or minimise the consequences of people going missing.

By contributing to PLEaS we work towards:

• inclusive and responsive communities where people engage and support each other
  
• empowered individuals and communities able to respond to adverse circumstances in ways that meet their needs
  
• accessible, effective, efficient and quality services to meet diverse requirement

Prevention

Prevention avoids the traumas and costs that occur when people go missing. Action needs to be taken at all levels within our community - by families, friends, organisations, government policy-makers, media, and missing people themselves.

Almost half of those reported missing each year are ‘unintentionally missing’. They have forgotten to let someone know where they have gone or their change in plans. People go missing for a variety of reasons. Sometimes simple strategies work, like letting someone know where we are going. At other times prevention means addressing complex circumstances that may have built up over a long time. In one in three cases, prevention means responding to the needs of someone who has been missing before.

The key to prevention is enhancing individual resilience and resourcefulness, strengthening family and community networks, and building the capacity of our organisations to contribute in a timely and effective way.

How do we do it?

As individuals we can:

• Let someone know where we are going and if our plans change so that we are not inadvertently reported missing.
  
• Seek to build respectful trusting relationships with open communication that is non-judgemental. This provides alternatives for dealing with issues that might otherwise contribute to people going missing.
  
• Develop skills in recognising circumstances or stressful events that may lead to people being more vulnerable to going missing and find ways of resolving or coping with them. For example, seek alternative options, talk to others, consider ways of coping in the past and see if they apply, seek professional help.
  

As someone providing a professional service, we can:

• Recognise the missing person dimension in our own role and work collaboratively with others to put in place prevention strategies. For example, managing school bullying to develop healthy school environments or mental health and other service providers working collaboratively to identify and respond to vulnerable people.
  
• A strengths-based approach to service delivery that recognises differences, promotes connectedness, builds problem-solving capacity, and fosters effective coping strategies to address missing person issues.
  

As an agency we can:

• Identify how our agency can play a role in preventing people going missing and build this into policy and practice. For example, issues around homelessness, mental health, gambling addiction, substance abuse, adoption, relationship breakdown, financial stress, gender identity and medical diagnoses, can all trigger people going missing.
  
• Foster collaborative partnerships with agencies responding to social need and services building community capacity. For example, inter-agency networks need to consider missing person issues when discussing cases, recognising that someone who has been missing is vulnerable to going missing again if relevant issues are not addressed.

Location

Early location significantly reduces the traumatic impacts when people are missing. It also reduces the missing persons’ vulnerability to becoming either a victim of crime, or in some cases, an offender.

Early location works best through a coordinated whole-of-community approach that takes into account the many different ways people are located. Missing people return or make contact of their own accord in over half of cases reported to police. And in many other cases, families and friends are the ones to locate the missing person.

It is mandatory that police take a missing person report where there are serious or genuine concerns for safety and welfare. However, early location is more likely if treated as a shared responsibility across the community. Tracing organisations will be better able to locate missing people by working with families and friends and through assistance provided by organisations delivering services to the missing person or holding information about them. Information sharing, case review, and feedback processes are critical.

How do we do it?

As individuals we can:

• Let someone know we are ok if out of contact for some time and assist others to connect too. For example, offering to be the link between someone missing and the family.
  
• Take action personally or help others in their search. For example, contact the missing person’s friends who may have information, put up posters, check with local transport services for whether they have seen the missing person. Coordinating efforts and sharing information with others who are searching is critical.
  
• Seek out and use resources that give guidance on locating someone who is missing. For example, the National Missing Persons Unit (NMPU) Search Options and Support (SOS) A guide for the families and friends of missing people provides practical search advice and is available from police missing person units and tracing agencies.
  

As someone providing a professional service, we can:

• Find ways to act on information brought to our attention that may assist in locating missing people. For example, if becoming aware that a client has been out of contact with family, explore ways of getting a message home.
• Provide regular feedback in a sensitive way to families and friends about progress, while respecting confidentiality and investigative issues that may constrain the information that can be passed on.
• Build the missing person dimension into your services. For example, if providing supported accommodation, recognise that some clients may be reported as missing and that it is possible to assist in resolving the case without impinging on the person’s privacy or jeopardising their safety.
  

As an agency we can:

• Identify how the agency can assist in locating missing people, recognising that privacy legislation does allow for limited information sharing. Build this into policy and practice. For example, one government agency sends a standard letter to the individual concerned passing on a request for contact.
• Build partnerships and work collaboratively to locate missing people. This includes identifying unmet needs, planning and delivering a coordinated service response, clarifying and communicating the organisation’s role, ensuring current knowledge of alternative services, and appropriate referral.
• Encourage participation and assist the efforts of families and friends in locating the missing person.

Education

To effectively prevent, locate, and provide support requires an informed understanding. There are many misunderstandings about missing person issues in both the general community and among professionals. We need to build an evidence base for effective strategies. Better knowledge promotes realistic expectations of what an agency can reasonably deliver. It can also result in positive and helpful media coverage and a more balanced appreciation of personal safety.

There is very limited research about missing persons issues in Australia and internationally. There are few if any evaluations of programs that relate to missing persons, so the evidence base about what works under what circumstances is inadequate.

It is important that education is both universal, to raise everyone’s awareness about missing person issues, as well as targeted to particular groups to make explicit how they can contribute and engage others. For example, this may be professionals providing particular services, such as counsellors or teachers, or those with community development roles in local government.

How do we do it?

As individuals we can:

• Inform ourselves about missing persons issues by accessing website information, references and reports; listening and talking to others, sharing experiences and concerns; and recognising and challenging myths For example, the NMPU website at www.missingpersons.info.au provides relevant information directly and also lists and links other resources.
  
• Develop an understanding of how to contribute to PLEaS in our diverse roles, for example as a parent, sibling, friend, neighbour, student, worker, community volunteer, carer, employer.
  
• Raise the awareness of other people in our communities. For example, ask the library or community information centre to display missing person material and acquire relevant resources; lobby for better services for missing people; talk about the issues with friends and family.
  

As someone providing a professional service, we can:

• Keep up to date, as the knowledge base about missing person issues and how to address them most effectively is continually evolving. For example, review regularly the research and practice literature about disenfranchised or ambiguous loss* , the NMPU website, on line journals, government policy and practice material.
  
• Contribute to the development of the body of knowledge about missing person issues through research, program development and evaluation, seeking grant funding, in-service training and sharing good practice. Share the outcomes, for example, by writing articles for professional journals or agency newsletters, presentations, media interviews.
  
• Advocate on missing person issues in the workplace and among wider professional groups. For example, assist professional bodies to develop policy, practice and ethical standards that are inclusive of missing person interests.
  

As an agency we can:

• Seek/allocate funds or undertake relevant research.
  
• Establish appropriate record-keeping systems that can contribute to both operational and research needs on missing person responses.
  
• Develop, implement and review policies for missing person responses that reflect current issues and best practice.

Support

Should a person go missing, appropriate support minimises the impacts suffered by missing people, family, friends and others in the community. Family and friends usually need both practical and emotional support, especially around the time the person goes missing. However, the need for support may continue after the time the person is located for everyone affected including the missing person.

Impacts include effects on physical and mental health, work, quality of life, emotional wellbeing, relationships, and finances. For some, the consequences are ongoing. Families may need to be connected with support services to assist them to cope with the impacts while the missing person is located and with the process of reconnection to ensure that issues influencing the disappearance are addressed. Social support is critical when adjusting to adversity.

Respect for individual and cultural difference is key to providing support in a way that is sensitive to the needs of a diverse range of people. Due regard for the knowledge individuals have about their own needs and strengths as a family should inform what support is needed and how it may be best provided.

How do we do it?

As individuals we can:

• Recognise that people respond differently to stress and trauma and there is no best way to express loss. Consider that needs may change over time. Differences may be influenced by age, gender, role in family, cultural and spiritual beliefs. For example, males may be more likely to need to do something while women may want to talk about emotional issues.
  
• Find out how best to help. Family and friends may need practical support or just want someone to listen. Making time to listen without seeking to solve issues is often a welcome strategy. Accepting that people may wish to talk at some times and not others needs to be respected. Expression of concern and genuine interest is likely to be comforting even if the person is unable to acknowledge it at the time. Inviting the involvement of both adults and children in the search process may be important.
  

As someone providing a professional service we can:

• Develop an understanding of loss with a particular emphasis on non-finite loss, disenfranchised or ambiguous loss*. This way of understanding loss is particularly relevant to a support approach for missing person issues. It is critical to recognise that the experience of loss and the need to develop coping skills may be ongoing. It is important to normalise individual experience of loss, for example, anxiety attacks or feeling the need to talk to absent family members are not uncommon.
  
• Shape your intervention to take account of the individual needs of each person affected. For example, the needs of siblings or separated family members often get overlooked. Ideally each person will have the opportunity to talk in an environment they identify as comfortable for them. For example, children will need explanations that consider their ability to make sense of the situation and allow them to express a range of feelings in an accepting environment, such as anger or fear, and sometimes even acknowledging feelings of relief.
  
• Consider a range of approaches. For example, support groups specifically focused on the needs of families and friends of missing people, or groups in other areas, such as mental health support or schools, that are sensitive to missing person issues and build on an understanding of ambiguous or disenfranchised loss.
  

As an agency we can:

• Identify and support research to better understand issues for family and friends of missing people as well as people who go missing.
  
• Include information about support services for missing people and their families and friends in agency information, such as annual reports, websites, or promotional leaflets. Establish web site hyperlinks. Ensure policy and procedures reflect the agency’s role in contributing to PLEaS.
  
• Mobilise sufficient resources to build missing person issues into core activities, such as the time and experienced staff/supervision to undertake adequate case reviews and thorough case management processes, or developing mechanisms for family members to make contact or travel home.