Missouri foster kids who go missing aren’t always reported, federal watchdog finds

Missouri’s child welfare agency is failing to keep track of kids who go missing from foster care and to prevent them from going missing again, a federal watchdog agency said in a report released Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General studied the cases of 59 children who went temporarily missing from foster care in Missouri in 2019. That year, 978 foster care children were missing at some point, according to the report.

In 27 cases — nearly half of those studied by the federal agency — there was no evidence that Missouri Children’s Division case managers had reported the children missing to local police or the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, as required by both federal and state law. And in 61% of the cases studied, the inspectors found no evidence in the children’s files that case managers contacted adults in the children’s lives (such as parents, juvenile officers or court-appointed representatives) to try to determine their whereabouts.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Social Services, which houses the Children’s Division, could not be reached for comment on the report.

The Office of Inspector General conducted the review after its agents helped local police find some of the children in 2019. The report comes amid heightened scrutiny of the Children’s Division. This year lawmakers held hearings over the agency’s lack of oversight of religious boarding schools, which face allegations of abuse. They also expressed frustration over the department’s high case loads, staff turnover and low pay.

The General Assembly included $2.1 million of state and federal funds in the budget this year to give the division’s case workers and supervisors a 3% raise, which Gov. Mike Parson vetoed alongside other state worker raises. The veto was not overidden by legislators.

In a letter responding to the federal agency last week, acting department director Jennifer Tidball wrote that local police often refuse to take missing persons reports of foster care youth, especially those aged 17 and older. It “may have discouraged [Children’s Division] staff from providing appropriate notice or appropriately documenting such notices in the past,” she wrote.

She said staff have “developed alternative protocols” to report missing foster care children to the Missouri State Highway Patrol instead.

Inspectors also found the Children’s Division failed to account for risk factors that would signal a child’s increased likelihood of going missing from a foster care placement. A majority of the 59 cases reviewed found the children had such indicators, including placement in a group home, six or more placements in the past or prior instances of having gone missing.

Most of their case managers did not note these risks and only 7 of 49 children with the risk factors were provided extra services to reduce the chances of them going missing, the report stated. In 23 cases there were no records of a family visitation plan, which the federal agency said help children maintain relationships with caring adults and are required by Missouri’s foster care policies.

Of the 59 children, 18 were not returned to state custody Of the remaining 41, the watchdog found no evidence in close to a third of cases that after the children’s return to foster care, they were given health screenings and other assessments of their safety. The screenings that were most frequently not conducted, the report said, were ones to determine whether the child had been the victim of sex trafficking.

In one case where there had been no evidence of any screenings, a child who returned to foster care told her case manager she had met a man online and asked for a ride across the state to live with him, the report stated. She tried to hitchhike when the case manager refused to drive her.

“It is possible that this child was being recruited for sex trafficking, or that she had already been trafficked while she was missing from care,” the report stated. “But without her having been properly screened, it is difficult to know for sure.”

The federal agency recommended the Children’s Division adopt policies to better identify children at risk of going missing from foster care and monitor staff to ensure they make the required reports when children do go missing.

In her letter to the agency, Tidball wrote that the state was developing human trafficking training for staff and working with community organizations to provide services to children at risk of being trafficked. She added the state last September adopted a compliance checklist for staff to documents their reports to police and other adults when children go missing.