Who ChildTrace is for
ChildTrace serves several distinct groups of people, each with a different level of access. This page explains, in plain terms, who can do what — and how each kind of account is created.
The general public — no account needed
Anyone can, without signing in:
- Report a missing child, a found child, or a sighting
- Search the published, safeguarding-reviewed missing-children list
- Check the status of a report they filed, using its reference number
- Read help, safety, and educational content
No account is required for any of this by design — reporting a child missing should never be blocked by a signup form.
Parents and guardians — self-registration
Anyone can create a free parent/guardian account by signing up directly on the website. This account lets a guardian:
- Register and manage their family's safety wearables
- Set safe zones and receive location alerts
- See their own filed reports and their status
Professionals — invited only, never self-registered
This is the group people are often surprised by: social workers, child protection officers, police officers, hospital and shelter staff, and NGO partners can all sign in to ChildTrace — but none of them can create their own account. Every professional account is created by a platform administrator or an organization supervisor, tied to a specific partner organization, and given only the permissions their role needs. There is no public "sign up as police officer" form, on purpose.
Social Worker
Creates and works cases, tracing, and reunification for their organization.
Child Protection Officer
Broader case oversight, assigns cases, closes cases, sees sensitive notes.
Police Officer
Creates and updates cases and tasks for law-enforcement involvement.
Hospital User
Reports unidentified or separated children arriving at a facility.
Shelter User
Records intake, placement, and care events for a sheltered child.
NGO Partner
Works cases referred to their organization.
Supervisor
Approves high-risk actions and public alerts; sees analytics and audit trail for their organization.
Auditor
Read-only access to the audit trail and security events — no case-editing rights at all.
A police officer account, for example, only sees what its role and organization are permitted to see — never a public map of every child on the platform.
Platform administrators
Administrators manage the platform itself: creating and disabling professional accounts, managing partner organizations, platform configuration, notification templates, and finance/donation records. There is exactly one way to become the very first administrator on a new deployment — a one-time, secret setup link that permanently disables itself the moment the first administrator account exists. After that, only an existing administrator can create another one.
Why access works this way
Anyone reporting a missing or found child, or checking on their own report, should never be slowed down by an account. But anyone who can see or act on a child's case — a social worker, an officer, a hospital — must be a known, accountable, invited person tied to a real organization. That split, deliberately, is the whole access model.