Parent Stress

July, 2003 — Missing relatives organisation Families Reunited has had a major web site over-hall in order to keep up with growth and demand for its services. Set up in February this year their membership is growing at an extraordinary rate with people from over 40 countries as far away as Argentina, Russia and Malaysia registered with them in their bid to bring long lost relatives together.

Formerly known as www.familysreunited.com, they have changed their name after finally managing to obtain the more recognizable domain name www.familiesreunited.org. The site also has a new look and design, which is more user-friendly and capable of holding more information for users. This site can also now offer anyone registering the option to download a 30 second video clip in order to offer an image of themselves with a personal appeal/message and the ability to provide more information in the search for missing relatives. This can be done using a web-cam or digital video camera.

The team behind the organisation, Terry Boydon, Tracy Brehmer and brother Mark Brehmer realised the need for a worldwide web site providing this service when Tracy was looking on the Internet for old school friends and began to wonder whether there was a similar facility for families.    

The site was an immediate success with people registering from all over the world, desperate to locate missing relatives. One such individual from Wyoming in America emailed the site to say ?thank you? for setting up the service. His son had disappeared some time ago and although he had used other services in his bid to find him, he hoped that the site would be one more way to help in his quest.

Terry is a web-designer and set up the site himself. After an enormous amount of research, together with long hours working in his spare time to put the site together, he and partners Tracy and Mark launched the site in February. It includes a database holding individual registered details which link to a search facility. People who register can also download genealogy software free of charge, which not only helps in their search for relatives but also helps them construct their family tree, although www.familiesreunited.org is definitely in the business of the here and now rather than the deceased!

Other services available via the site include private investigators ?Pegasus Investigations?, who are members of the Institute of Professional Investigators and the United Kingdom Professional Investigators Network. Pegasus specialise in locating missing relatives on a worldwide basis.    

Registration with www.familiesreunited.org is completely free but a ?5 annual administration fee has been introduced to cover the use of search facilities. Anyone who registers has their registration details checked by the Families Reunited team in order to ensure that there are no abusive messages and that there is no potential to misuse the system, as they said ?this is obviously a very sensitive area and we don?t want the service to be abused or to allow vulnerable people to be led into false hope of finding missing relatives. Regardless of how many people we have registered, we will continue to carry out checks to maintain this security.?

Families Reunited are continually seeking ways to improve the way they help search for relatives and in this respect, they hope to introduce messaging links to mobile phones from the site in the very near future.    
The idea is that whenever someone new registers on the site, those with the corresponding name will be contacted immediately so that they can check the site to find out if that person is their relation.

The site has proved a success with people from all walks of life, from expats around the world to those simply trying to locate relatives in order to inform them of a new baby or even imminent wedding plans!

For further information on www.familiesreunited.org contact the Families Reunited team on tel: 08707 650090 or 0701 0709 003 email: info@familiesreunited.org or Allane Hay Consultant email: allane@ahcelgin.fsnet.co.uk.