South Dakota officially has a new tool to help find missing children. Tuesday, South Dakota was certified as one of the only state's in the country with a Child Abduction Response Team. It's a team made up of DCI and FBI agents, highway patrol troopers and local investigators from Sioux Falls and Rapid City. 

"It compliments the cooperative efforts in South Dakota," Attorney General Marty Jackley said.

Finding an abducted child takes a quick and qualified response, and South Dakota's newly certified team will do just that.

"It assures our local communities that we have in place a nationally recognized and respected group to respond for those missing children," Jackley said.

In September, nearly 40 South Dakota investigators were involved in a large scale drill in Pierre to find a missing child, and this certification means that training has paid off. The team was certified by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention as only the fifth Child Abduction Response Team in the country.

The team is especially important in South Dakota because it will be useful in rural parts of the state that need more resources and more help searching for a missing child. 

"And it brings in a lot of specialized resources, the bloodhounds, the equipment, so especially in the smaller counties that we can act real quickly to get that child back," Jackley said.

And finding a missing child is why South Dakota has trained so hard to get this certification.

"Anytime we can help out and have cooperative efforts between federal, state and local officials to bring the resources forward to help a missing child is a good opportunity," Jackley said.

Besides having a qualified team to search for missing children, Jackley says the certification will also help South Dakota access more federal funding for the agencies involved with this team.