FY 2003 OJJDP DISCRETIONARY CONTINUATION PROGRAMS-CHILD PROTECTION

The Missing Children's Assistance Act, Title IV, Section 405 of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 (Public Law 93-415), as amended, authorizes the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to make grants or enter into contracts with public agencies or non-profit private organizations for research, demonstration projects, or service programs designed to address the problems of children who are missing, exploited, abused or neglected, and children who have been exposed to domestic or community violence. AMECO was created through an OJJDP grant to the National Victims Center in 1994, and is the only national non-profit organization of this type. OJJDP has funded AMECO in order to ensure that missing and exploited children's activities are effectively managed and coordinated with both public and private agencies that serve missing and exploited children and their families.

This grant will allow AMECO and Team H.O.P.E. (Help Offering Parents Empowerment) to work collaboratively in providing ongoing oversight, support and assistance to missing and exploited children non-profit organizations (NPOs); improve the quality of services for missing and exploited children and their families; and to continue to provide ongoing support and one-on-one assistance to families of missing children. AMECO has three main goals for the next year:

1) To increase the professionalism of AMECO so that it can more effectively present its member agencies and advance the cause of missing and exploited children.
2) To become a more active and effective partner with our member agencies in efforts to garner support for their work and to more fully develop their management capacities.
3) To manage effectively the growth of direct services to families affected by missing and exploited children through Team Hope, and adults who were abducted as children through Take Root.

AMECO intends to build its own systems and capacity to better assist its member NPOs to build a stable foundation for the important services they provide. AMECO will work with its members to assure that their success and expertise are acknowledged, and to seek the support and resources they so clearly deserve. In conjunction with this, AMECO will work with members to resolve the issues limiting their success. These efforts will focus on:

Strengthening their management capacity;
Identifying potential donors and raising funds to support their programs;
Increasing transparency and collegiality among member agencies.

AMECO indeed seeks to provide increasingly effective and well-organized direct services to families of missing and exploited children. Building on a successful year of integrating Team Hope and AMECO, we will fully develop the systems that will enable Team Hope to handle the increased demand for services and continually improve teamwork. Adding to our support services for searching families, we will integrate Take Root into AMECO to provide services to adults who were abducted as children.

CA/NCF

This award to the Association of Missing and Exploited Children's Organizations will fund the following activities:

-To establish accreditation standards for missing children's organizations
-To produce a manual outlining AMECO policies and procedures for member organizations
-To identify benefits AMECO can provide to its membership, e.g. training, -networking, annual conference, technical assistance, and others as identified
-To educate communities about AMECO and membership benefits
-To conduct a census of all missing childrens organizations in the US
-To survey missing children's organizations in the US about what technical assistance and training needs they have
-To recruit members to AMECO
-To maintain a roster of AMECO members, including a list of services / resources available in each community
-To field, document, investigate and address ethics complaints against AMECO members
-To refer families to their local AMECO member organization via a telephone hotline and website
-To administer the Take Root project

ca/ncf