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.
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