CHILD ID KITS
While doing research for information on ways to better protect children from child sex offenders, Cheri stumbled across information about Child ID Kits distributed by police that are used to issue an Amber Alert. She learned that these are widely available across the USA, but not so much in Canada. According to information provided by US statistics, it can take up to 12 hours to collect all of the information required to issue an Amber Alert from the time that the child is reported missing, and with these kits, this time can be reduced to 1 hour. After spending some time looking for Canadian data surrounding this, she wasn’t able to confirm anything in Canada, but was able to confirm that these ID Kits are also provided by police in Canada. She was never aware of this, so she wanted to learn more in order to inform parents and guardians so that more people have these available in their homes should they ever need it.
After consulting with a police liason, Cheri learned that these kits are distributed by local police and RCMP when they host community events. Unfortunately these hosted events take place maybe once per year or two. There is a lack of resources to distribute these often and ensure they’re widely available here in Canada, because our events are family friendly and based around child safety and prevention, we decided it would be a great opportunity if we could assist by distributing these kits at our events. We were provided with some information to request some directly from the RCMP, and they were happy to send us 250 ID Kits to get us started. Our team completes these kits and provide them for free to ensure anyone who wishes to have one that attends an event can. Our fundraisers and donations collected, help us to cover the cost of the supplies needed to complete the kits.
Our Child ID Kits are completed on-site and indoors, they include a photo of the child, description, height, weight, fingerprints & DNA sample. Everything is packaged and provided to the parent/guardian, no information collected is kept by our organization, no information collected is provided to any third party by our organization including but not limited to law enforcement. The contents of these kits are the responsibility of the parent/guardian receiving the kit, and is to be kept by the parent/guardian, and provided to local police in the event that the child is reported missing, kits are provided to police by the parent/guardian.
