Brief Description:
A colloborative effort including the Association of Public Safety Communications Officers (APCO), National Academies of Emergency Dispatch (NAED), National AMBER Alert Initiative (U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs and Fox Valley Technical College), National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), and National Emergency Number Association (NENA) to develop a reference specifically for calltakers to present the missing and/or sexually exploited child response process in a logical progression from the initial call through the first response.

Project Need:
To provide an uniform set of recommended procedures for handling calls from parents of missing children and from parents, guardians and caretakers seeking help in protecting their children from sexual exploitation. These uniform procedures will provide call center guidance for the receipt and collection of information by calltakers, which is vital to the speedy recovery of missing children. Reports of missing and/or sexually exploited children may be among the most difficult, challenging, and emotionally charged cases public safety agency will ever experience. Each stage of the case, therefore, from initial call through successful recovery, forms a critical component of a thorough child-protection response. Often the initial call forms the foundation and direction of the response to that missing and/or sexually exploited child.

Stakeholders:
Users – public safety communication centers/agencies including, but not limited to: emergency calltakers and administrators.
Producers – public safety communication training institutes and other related academia
General Interest – public safety and child advocacy professional associations.

To download and review the draft Standard for Handling Calls Pertaining to Missing and Exploited Children, click here.

To submit relative comments regarding this standard, please click here or email comments to apcostandards@apco911.org. Please note you will receive a response regarding all relative comments submitted, if for some reason you do not receive a response within 30 days of submitting your response, please contact APCO International’s Comm Center & 9-1-1 Services Department at apcostandards@apco911.org or call (888) APCO-911.