Home Office
The Minister for Preventing Abuse, Exploitation and Crime, Karen Bradley, yesterday (February 24) received an award for her work to promote the Child Rescue Alert (CRA) service.
She was presented with the political hero award by Sir Bob Geldof at a ceremony in central London.
CRA is a nationwide alert system which sends out free notifications to registered members of the public when a child goes missing or their life is at risk.
The alerts enable police to quickly distribute key information such as the childs age, appearance and last known location.
The charity Missing People, which runs the alert system alongside the National Crime Agency and technology company Groupcall, hosted the awards to recognise people who have supported the system. It comes after a two-week publicity campaign to promote the service.
Karen Bradley was commended for promoting the system to fellow parliamentarians. After visiting the Missing People charity to learn all about the alerts, she wrote to all MPs asking them to encourage their constituents to sign up.
Karen Bradley said: The first few hours of a missing child investigation are crucial and it is vital that as many people as possible are looking for them.
Children who go missing or who are abducted deserve the very best response from all the relevant agencies. That is why the Home Office is working to refresh the governments strategy on missing children and adults by the summer as a top priority.
I am honoured to win this award and congratulate everyone involved with Child Rescue Alert.
Sir Bob Geldof said:
I commend the great work done by Karen Bradley to promote Child Rescue Alerts and more generally to ensure that missing People are found and returned to safety as soon as possible.
Its great to be able to recognise that today, as well as to thank all the other people who have worked so hard on this critically important issue.
To receive the alerts from CRA, which are funded by the Royal Mail and Peoples Postcode Lottery, members of the public can register for geographically-targeted texts, emails or app notifications by visiting www.childrescuealert.org.uk