The Ontario government has announced funding for a program in Windsor aimed at finding out why kids go missing and and how to prevent child exploitation.
The province is providing $96,954 in funding through the Victim Support Grant which will support Windsor police in work with the Canadian Mental Health Association's Windsor Essex Youth Wellness Hub.
The grant will help police train staff at the Youth Wellness Hub so they can speak with the youth to learn more about why they went missing, where they went, or if they were in contact with anyone.
Staff Sgt. Rich Sieberer with the Windsor Police Service Special Victims Unit says he believes they will be the first in Canada to have a program like this.
"Hopefully that will lessen the numbers and they will go down in the future as a result of these conversations," he says.
The goal is to then connect the youth to the right resources and ensure they are not being exploited.
Sieberer says they had 550 youth that went missing in 2022 out of the 1,150 total missing persons cases.
He says there are reasons why these children and youth go missing, including drug and alcohol addiction, problems at home and problems at school.
"Everyone that goes missing will be looked at to determine if there was a reason why they went missing,' says Sieberer. "That's the bottom like with these discussions, missing is a symptom of something, otherwise they wouldn't go missing or runaway. We want to find out why they went missing and their reasons for that.
He says these children and youth can be at risk of being criminally exploited, sexually exploited, or a victim of human trafficking.
"It's going to be confidential between the youth and the counsellor when it comes to that information. But if they receive some things, some intelligence on our end, if these people are being sexually exploited or criminally exploited, hopefully the information comes back to us and we can act on that," he says.
The funding announced Sept. 20 is part of a $4-million province-wide funding announcement to help support victims and survivors of intimate partner violence/domestic violence, human trafficking, and child exploitation.