Missing People Charity

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No. 093/16

Ref: 540

Date: 15th February 2016

To: Branches with POSTAL Members



Dear Colleague

Missing People Charity

Branches will be aware of the above mentioned charity which is supported by the CWU, and the invaluable involvement of Vinnie Micallef CWU Delivery Representative in East London who conceived the idea of sending messages via PDA’s to help in locating missing people.

As a follow on to this important initiative there is now a national campaign asking members of the public to sign up to receive Child Rescue Alerts on their mobile phones.

Child Rescue Alerts are activated when a child has gone missing and police believe their life is in imminent danger. Currently more than 350,000 people are registered to receive the alerts, which are issued by the charity Missing People at the request of the police. Just four Child Rescue Alerts have been issued in the UK, most recently in March last year. The new campaign, fronted by TV personality and Missing People patron Stephen Fry, aims to encourage more people and businesses to sign up.

Stephen Fry said: ‘I believe that Child Rescue Alerts should be a national institution – something for everyone to find out about and sign up for.’

Missing People partnership

Royal Mail already distributes ‘high risk’ alerts, including Child Rescue Alerts, to postmen and women via PDA’s, and since the partnership with Missing People began in 2014, 63 alerts have been issued and 41 people found. To mark the first anniversary of the partnership Royal Mail has contributed £50,000 to fund the Child Rescue Alert system in 2016.

Royal Mail is connected to every community in the UK, placing them and our members in a unique position to support Missing People and Child Rescue Alerts. The CWU and Royal Mail are united in encouraging as many as possible to sign up to this worthwhile cause, using their own phones, and to also encourage family and friends to do the same. It follows that the more people who are made aware that a child is missing, the better the chances of finding them safe and well.’

How to sign up

There are two ways to sign up to receive a Child Rescue Alert:

To sign up for free click on the following link https://www.childrescuealert.org.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Or

Text HERO and your postcode to 85080. (Text to register costs your standard network text message rate)
Starting from the 15th Feb for a fortnight the charity Missing People will be running a Child Rescue alert campaign. This is to encourage people to sign up to receive child rescue alerts on their personal mobile. Their aim is to have a million people signed up by the end of the campaign. Anyone who does sign up will only ever get child rescue alerts of which we would hope there are no more the 3-5 a year.

To support this campaign Royal Mail will be placing a postmark on mail in the second week and running at least 4 internal comms stories asking employees/members to sign up and to encourage friends and family to do the same. I am sure you will all agree this is an initiative worth supporting and something that makes Royal Mail and our members different to anyone else in the postal industry and supports Stephen Fry’s message that it should be a national institution what better way to get started than by having it delivered by a national institution.

Any enquiries to Bob Gibson’s Office, quoting reference: 540

Email address: outdoorsecretary@cwu.org

Yours sincerely

Bob Gibson

CWU Assistant Secretary