National Missing Persons Week 2024

When Loren’s brother Dan disappeared in 2011, around 30,000 Australians were reported missing each year. By 2023, that figure had almost doubled to 56,000.

Australia is fortunate to have an entire week dedicated to this issue and those it affects. National Missing Persons Week was established in 1988 by the loving family of Tony Jones, as a time for families to share their lived experience and remind the public about the people missing from their lives.

Since landing in this space in 2011, we’ve seen various policing organisations attempt to ‘own’ the Week with top cop media opportunities, rather than acknowledging it for what it had been established to be. Some jurisdictions have gone beyond a soundbite, inviting families to their launch events. Even if tokenistic, it gave families a chance to feel included and heard.

This year, though, not one police jurisdiction hosted any real-world event for NMPW. Coming after the unsuccessful 2021 parliamentary petition to make NMPW an official calendar item, and the rejection of the 2024 Federal Budget submission, it was another blow to a community already so disillusioned.

For the past 11 years, The Missed Foundation has gone big for NMPW: TV commercials, coffee cups, books, podcasts, murals, art installations, world-first therapeutic tools and educational resources, and more. This year we choose to take a step back. The pace and standard of what had been delivered until then was not sustainable without support, and every week is Missing Persons Week at Missed. Rather than launching another new initiative, 2024 became a time to regroup, focus on what mattered most, and create space for families’ voices to shine. The team will be back next year with fresh energy and ideas.

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For nmpw 2024, the public was asked to get involved in five simple ways to show support:

1. Watch our episode of You Can’t Ask That
2. Spare a thought for families experiencing real anguish whenever a show included a missing person storyline
3. Buy or wear our merch
4. Educate yourself with our Ambiguous Loss Masterclass
5. Listen to lived experiences on our podcast, What’s Missing