After my Neighbourhood (Mummy W) watch post the other day, a friend contacted me to ask if I’d filled in a Herbert Protocol form.  I’d never heard of this before, so. looked it up:

According to Age UK:

‘The Herbert Protocol is a national scheme that encourages carers, family and friends to provide and put together useful information, which can then be used in the event of a vulnerable person going missing.

Carers and / or relatives and friends can complete a form in advance, including important information about the missing individual such as the contact numbers, medication needed, locations the person was last seen and so forth also a photograph can be provided.

The form can be easily sent or handed to the police in the event of a loved one going missing, reducing the time to gather this information. ‘

Here is a link to access the form.

Because Mum is free range but rather limited free range, I doubt we will ever need it, but having had the frustrations when I called 999 a few months ago of ‘I have to ask these questions even if they are not relevant’ that tied me up answering them rather than being able to look after Mum, I figure anything you can do in advance that will save time when you need it is useful.

It took me about 40 minutes to fill in the form, but I did have to use a combination of my Mum and Dad Black Book for some details and check in with my sisters on…for example…how tall they thought Mum is now and how on earth we could describe her complexion.

If you have a relative in a similar sort of situation it does look like a pretty useful thing to have to hand or on file to email over to the police rather than scrabbling for information in the moment.