Starfleet had no idea what happened to Voyager in the Badlands. They searched for several months with no trace, and assumed the ship was lost.
It wasn't until "Message in a Bottle" that they finally learned of Voyager's existence in the Delta quadrant. Once they did, they immediately initiated the Pathfinder Project to figure out a way to bring them back home.
In "Pathfinder", we learn that Starfleet has spent several months and considerable amount of resources trying to figure out a way to bring them back home quickly. This project was initially a failure, namely because any ship sent out to meet Voyager would have to make the return trip home: potentially risking the lives of a whole other crew while taking years to complete.
So Starfleet did the next best thing, with the help of Voyager, by establishing regular contact. Voyager gets several lucky breaks via technology way beyond Federation knowledge and winds up on the verge of the beta quadrant by after only 7 years.
In the end, it took a future Captain Janeway and the disruption of the Borg transwarp network to finally bring Voyager back into Federation space. We learn in "Endgame" had that not happened, it would've taken another 16 years. So even at the end of their journey, it would've taken Starfleet 8 years to meet Voyager even halfway, and another 8 years to get back. Endangering the lives of another crew for that long would not have been considered an acceptable risk.
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