Ind. children to receive ID kits

In 1997, the American Football Coaches Association was looking for a way to give back to the communities and countless fans that had supported them through seasons.

In November, the AFCA and the FBI’s National Child ID Program  will join efforts with Gov. Mitch Daniels and the Walmart Foundation to provide more than 162,000 children-identification kits to every kindergarten and first grade student in the state of Indiana.

After the idea for the child identification kits began, they were handed out to parents and grandparents at football games, said Bret Phillips, vice president of government relations for the AFCA and FBI National Child ID Program.

“What got the idea started for coaches was they saw where they had captured audiences at football games,” Phillips said. “So we used them as an outlet for handing out ID kits as parents left the stadium, and now it’s grown to what we’re doing in Indiana.”

Every year, 800,000 children go missing in America, according to the Department of Justice.

“Statistics have been coming out since the founding of the AMBER Alert system, and they haven’t changed that much,” Phillips said.

At the time when the AMBER alerts were founded, fewer than two percent of households in America had a copy of their children’s fingerprints, Phillips said.

“Stats kept popping up, and we thought maybe there was a need for these ID kits,” Phillips said.

The kit provides parents with a set of their children’s fingerprints and other identifiable information that can be recorded and stored at home. The ID kit can provide vital information to law enforcement agencies in case the child ever goes missing.

In 2001, the FBI approached the AFCA about teaming up with the Child ID program, Phillips said.

“The FBI caught word of what we were doing and asked to partner with it and do more community outreach programs,” Phillips said. “The kits allowed them to do that, and the child identification kits became FBI-approved.”

To help raise awareness for the program, Daniels will declare November as “Child Identification Month,”  according to an October press release.

“There’s not much more that anyone else can do than protect those who are most vulnerable,” Daniels said in an audio recording from the launch of Indiana’s participation in the Child Identification Program, which was launched Oct. 6.

Indianapolis Colts coach Jim Caldwell was also at the launch to promote the Child Identification Program.

“I am a father of four and have two grandsons,” Caldwell said. “This initiative certainly touches everyone in our communities.”