The Child Alert Foundation (CAF) is a private, 501c(3) non-profit organization that was established in the state of Pennsylvania in 1998. Operating strictly from donations and fund raising, CAF is dedicated to assisting federal and local law enforcement agencies in the recovery of missing and abducted children and elderly individuals. The Child Alert Foundation helps law enforcement notify their surrounding communities with their copyrighted Abduction Central Alert (ACA) community alert notification system.
The Child Alert Foundation was the first organization to ever create a fully automated implementation of the Amber Plan outlined in 1997 in Dallas, Texas, which has since become the AMBER Alert. The original Amber Plan (1997) was a faxed based procedure where law enforcement agencies were required to prepare information for public distribution and then fax that information to a list of designated primary radio stations. This was a manual procedure and time consuming process.
The ACA system created by Child Alert is a totally automated procedure that was designed from the very beginning to exceed the original Amber Plan requirements. Rather than limit the alert to radio, CAF expanded coverage to include television and news organizations as well as other law enforcement agencies for notification. In addition to sending faxes as the original plan required, the ACA system sends emails, alert pagers, send text messaging, build automatic web pages, posters and more. The ACA system also provides full circle notifications by issuing closure alerts when an incident is terminated.
Since its original implementation in 1998, the ACA system has been further expanded to assist law enforcement with notifying the community when a Silver Alert is issued for missing elderly individuals.
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