NATIONAL MISSING PERSONS WEEK
30 July – 5 August 2023
Missed has produced a world-first training tool to help professionals better support families of long-term missing people who are living with ambiguous loss.
Launching for National Missing Persons Week, the Ambiguous Loss Masterclass will help police officers, search and rescue organisations, the media, and counsellors to be better informed about the ways in which the complex grief shows up in people’s lives when someone is missing.
More than 55,000 Australians were reported missing last year – up more than 35% in three years – and while most are found within a week, around 1-2% go on to become long-term missing persons. We know from the research, that for every missing person reported, at least 12 other people are adversely affected.
Despite this growing demand, there are currently no funded services available in Australia to provide support for those affected by a person going missing. This masterclass, like all of our initiatives, aims to fill this gap and help thousands of Australians as they navigate this difficult journey.
NMPW 2022
For NMPW last year, we launched our pre-eminent project, The Hope Narratives, ran the Custom Casey fundraising challenge with internationally-acclaimed podcast Casefile, and rolled out a national advertising campaign educating Australians on ambiguous loss through over $300,000 worth of in-kind outdoor, online and radio space from Mindshare.
Origin story
In 1982, Perth man Tony Jones (pictured) went missing from Townsville, Queensland. In 1988, after an incredible display of commitment from his brother Brian and cousin Garrett, and with the encouragement of media icon Ita Buttrose, they called for the first week of August every year to be dedicated to highlighting missing Australians.
National Missing Persons Week (NMPW) is a vital opportunity for families of missing Australians to both remind the public of their loved one, and to give an important insight into the breadth of complexities they face in their absence.
We are forever indebted to the Jones family for creating this invaluable legacy for Tony; many families all over the world are still lobbying for their own national equivalent.
