A report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general analyzing data from 45 state agencies has found that children who disappeared while in foster care were unaccounted for an average of 34 days, with nine states losing children for more than 50 days, reports the Washington Post. Children who go missing are more likely to suffer substance use, HIV infection, sex trafficking or involvement with the justice system.
State agencies recorded more than 110,000 episodes of missing kids involving roughly 44,000 of the more than 1 million children in foster care between July 2018 and December 2020. Nearly two-thirds of the recorded missing-children episodes involved kids ages 15 to 17, while just 2 percent of the incidents were for those 11 or younger. Most children included in the report were found, but about 6,600 were still missing at the end of the study. In 12 states, children who went missing from foster care died.