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Child Find of America

Child Find of America

Missing Child Poster
Founder	Gloria Yerkovich
Founded at	1980
Headquarters	New Paltz, New York
Region	America
Services	Locating Missing Children, Parental Help, Education and Training
Fields	Missing Children, Child abduction and Runaway kids
Executive Director	Donna Linder
President Board of Directors	Elizabeth Baker
Vice President	Eric Malter
Treasurer Board of Directors	Arthur Finnel
Board of directors	Michael Titens, Dr. Lena Green
Website	https://childfindofamerica.org

Child Find of America is a non-for-profit organisation aiming to protect and prevent child abduction, missing children and kids in danger. This organisation acts as a mediator to locate missing children abducted by parents as well as resolving conflicts that cause runaway children to escape toxic and abusive home environments. Child Find America’s mission is to establish a safe and healthy environment for children in America. It is listed as one of the top resources for support and guidance for missing and abducted children in America, which can be shown through their active investigation, education to prevent child abduction and mediation to resolve parental abduction and family conflicts .

Report on the Compliance with the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction (2009)

This topic relates to the wiki project on adoption, fostering, orphan care and displacement. This project is highly correlated with Child Find of America and their mission to help find missing, abducted and runaway kids and keeping them safe.

Background

Child Find was founded by a mother Gloria Yerkovich in 1980 when her 5 year old daughter was abducted by her father 6 years prior. Knowledge about parent abduction was inadequate during this time and there were limited resources when it came to locating missing children. From here Gloria founded Child Find of America recognising the demand for a mediator when it came to parental abductions whilst raising awareness and prevention of missing and abducted kids in America . After 4 years, Gloria’s daughter was found and Child Find was recognised globally. Today, this nonprofit organisation remains relevant expanding its services to not only missing children but the prevention and resolution in family crisis that result in parental child abduction and runaway or trafficked kids. The increasing awareness of this organisation meant that more donations and volunteers were contributing to helping keep kids safe. This organisation provided a glimmer of hope and support for those families whose children had been abducted and/or runaway.

Key Programs and Services

Four key programs are provided by Child Find America in order to support their mission of safety and security for kids. These key programs include; location services, parental help, prevention, education and training, and donate.

Location services deals with family/parental services, stranger abductions and runaways/throwaways. This section goes into detail about what parents/caretakers should do when your child is missing and provides a free helpline service to register your child increasing chances of them being found.

The next key program involves parent help. This category focuses on managing conflict with co-parenting, communication skills and resources for parents. Links to websites are provided along with and an anonymous parent help hotline in order to advise struggling parents by creating co-parenting plans, skills and values. This allows families to explore options and implement a safe environment to avoid parental abduction and runaway situations as runaway children usually escape due to family conflict/abuse situations.

The third program offered by Child Fund relates to education and safety resources. Child Find also conducts training, sharing their research and resources with parents, volunteers, and law enforcement. This training and presentations include; finding missing children, neglect and abuse, runaway, abduction and domestic violence. Many documents and tool kits are available free of charge in order to help keep kids safe emotionally and physically. Lastly, you can donate to the charity to assist with children and families in crisis.

Report on the Compliance with the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction (2010 edition - front cover)

Child Find's support for Missing Children

Child fund provides three main groups which help to identify the circumstances of missing children in order to quickly locate them to safety. Guidelines are created for parents/caretakers and are different depending on whether your child is missing, runaway or abducted. The carer of a missing child are taken through a series of steps in order to help assist parents who are unqualified in these situations. This first step includes calling police and providing them with all the important information regarding your child. The second step involves checking common hiding spots and and immediate surroundings. Lastly Child Find provide their toll free hotline to which you can register your missing child, where a case worker will immediately begin to investigate coordinating with parents and authorities. Child Find also issues missing children posters and flyers through national media partners in order to help find missing children as quick as possible and bring them home safely. By providing guidelines and suggesting scenarios this proves to be supportive for parents who under stressful situations, may forget to recognise. Child find of America is listed as a popular resource in America to assist responders and authorities in both missing and runaway children cases.

Child Find's support for Runaway Children

Missing Children notice on a milk carton

Child Find further lists guidelines and resources on what to do if your child has runaway. Unlike missing children, the situation involving runaway children can be prevented by providing a safe and comforting environment at home. It is found that 86% of runaway kids are between 14-17 years old explain that “most runaways run from broken homes” . As a result of this, Child Find of America provides guidelines in how to manage runaway children and prevent this situation from happening in the future, ensuring a safe and comfortable environment for children and adolescents. One main way prevention can be tackled is by "helping families to manage more successfully when tensions between parents and adolescents are apparent". Child Find aims to do this through their programs, guidelines and training, explaining the importance of parents displaying the love and concern for your children if they return home from running away as well as directly addressing the issue that caused the child to leave in the first place. Child Find also uses the approach of Missing Children Posters as placing posters of missing children in publicised areas such as supermarkets and milk cartons is a popular and effective approach in finding missing children .

Child Find's support for Abduction by Parent or Family member

Child Find of America also addresses how to guide parents when child abduction has occurred by the other parent or family members. In 1988 NISMART recorded around 354,100 kids went missing due to abduction by parent or family member. Thus Child Find America acts as a mediator for distressed family members, guiding them into making the correct choices when it come to child abduction and doing all that can be done in order to bring the child to safety. Often child abduction is conducted by the non-custodial parent. There is also cases discussed in the Hague Convention of Child Abduction which explains that mothers often abduct their children in order to keep them safe from domestic violence and abuse committed by the husband/father. Child Find advises parents of abducted children to gather all legal documents, custody and divorce papers and visitation agreements when informing police since it is a federal crime to "retain a child [from the United States] with the intent to obstruct the lawful exercise of parental rights”. A helpline for parents dealing with child abduction is also provided by Child Find since the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act (PKPA)  “assures that full faith and credit is given to child-custody determinations". Furthermore, the confidential helpline allows carers to talk to professionals about how to manage parenting styles, conflicts with co-parenting, prevention of parental abduction, domestic violence, abuse and neglect concerns. Case managers are also available to help create a resolution and prevent parental abductions including: custody and visitation plans, legal dilemmas, skills, communication and support systems where Child Find can act as a mediator to ensure a safe environment for all children.

Child Find's Resources

This non-for-profit organisation is recognised for accommodating many resources to help parents of missing, abducted and runaway children. These National resources are categorised into missing children,child safety & domestic violence, family support, mental health & abuse and legal support, producing specific resources catered to the circumstances. Some of these national resources include: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, National Child Abuse Reporting Hotline and National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence providing easily accessible phone numbers, websites and apps for parents of missing children. These resources provide other avenues for parents to help find their missing and abducted children with the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) having a success rate of 96% in the long-term cases. Donations can also be made through Child Find of America's website which allows the non-for-profit organisation to assist in finding missing and abducted children and protecting them from dangerous environments as well as helping families in crisis. Child Find has an A+ rating from Charity Watch since 1997.

Bibliography

 Broughton, D. D., Allen, E. E., Hannemann, R. E., & Petrikin, J. E. (2006). Getting 5000 families back together: reuniting fractured families after a disaster: the role of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Pediatrics, 117(Supplement 4), S442-S445.

Finkelhor, D., Sedlak, A., & Hotaling, G. T. (1990). Missing, abducted, runaway, and thrownaway children in America: First report, numbers and characteristics national incidence studies: Executive summary. DIANE Publishing.

Flowers, R. B. (2001). Runaway kids and teenage prostitution: America's lost, abandoned, and sexually exploited children(No. 54). Greenwood Publishing Group.

 Lampinen, J., Arnal, J., & Hicks, J. (2009). The Effectiveness of Supermarket Posters in Helping to Find Missing Children. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24(3), 406–423.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260508317184

 Millar, H. (1996). Resolving parental abduction: Child find of America’s mediation program. Mediation Quarterly, 13(3), 207–216. https://doi.org/10.1002/crq.3900130306

Schmidt WM. (1975) Runaway Children. JAMA. 1975;232(6):651–652. doi:10.1001/jama.1975.03250060043027

  Sprague, D. (2012). Investigating missing children cases : a guide for first responders and investigators (First edition.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, an imprint of Taylor and Francis.

  Weiner, M. H. (2000). International child abduction and the escape from domestic violence. Fordham L. Rev., 69, 593.