A new breed of techology tools and apps are helping parents who have children who go missing. Picture: AFP Source: AFP
FOR parents of children who wander off, a new breed of technology tools could be the difference between life and death.
Some tools are designed to beep when your toddler wanders away in a shopping mall or falls into a pool.
Others are being used to track special need children who can disappear from home as soon as their parents look away.
Elizabeth Smart, who in 2002 was a 14-year-old Utah girl kidnapped and help captive for 9 months, recently launched the iPhone app Hero for parents to use in those first vital moments after a child goes missing.
If a child is lost in a crowded area, a parent with the free Hero app sends out an instant notification that appears on every phone with that app within 8km, using the power of social media to sound the alarm.
Elizabeth Smart, who was held captive for nine months in 2002, has made an app to help parents when their child goes missing. Picture: AP
If it's loaded on an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can find a person's location, or at least the location of their phone.
This app can help for parents wanting to know their teenagers have arrived somewhere safely, or help friends find which end of the beach they should head to so they can meet up.
But that sort of device will not help every parent.
Melbourne-based financial planner Kathy Havers became the Australian distributor for the British company Lok8u and their GPS watch nu.m8+ after buying one herself to monitor her autistic teenager who had a history of wandering off.
She said many of the tracking devices were removable, which was a problem for parents of special needs children.
To the child wearing a nu.m8+, it seems just to be a digital watch.
But to a parent, it's a locator tool. They can type a request in to a password-protected website or send a text using a mobile phone and, assuming the phone is line-of-sight to GPS satellites, will find their child's location within three minutes.
It can be programmed to set off a warning to the parent if a child goes to a particular location, or if the child removes the wristband.
Because the watch uses GPS, it won't help locate them if they're inside a building, like a mall. But it will help parents find their child as soon as they leave a building.
The nu.m8+ comes in a range of price packages, starting at $250 for the watch and a monthly fee of $22.90.
Ms Havers says the majority of the people who make the purchases are parents of special needs kids with a habit of walking off.
"People don't tend to spend that sort of money until their child has done it once and then you have this awful thing in your heart and your head that you can never have it happen again" she said.
Independent Living Centres Australia sells a range of gadgets that, unlike GPS sensors, can help parents find a child lost inside a building such as a shopping mall.
The Angel Alert is a high-tech necklace for the child that wirelessly connects to a receiver for a parent. If the two devices become more than 9m apart, the child's device sounds a signal.
The Giggle Bug uses technology similar to wireless gadgets to help you find your car keys.
If you can't see your child in a crowd, you hit a button on a hand-held unit and the click on lady bug on the child starts beeping. It is designed to work at a range up to 30m indoors.
The "Mommy I'm here" teddy bear is a similar gadget, and works up to 50m. The advanced model can be programmed to set off an alarm if the child goes more than 10m from the monitor carried by the parent.
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