Lost Children in the System

As far as neglect goes, there probably cannot be any worse than when a child’s whereabouts are unknown. As a matter of fact, such occurrences might just lose you the right to your kids if it happened to a parent. Now take that one kid and multiply it by, say, 4600. Yes, 4600. That is the estimated number of kids allegedly unaccounted for or missing in the foster care system Nationwide. It turns out that kids do go missing from the foster care system quite a lot, under the care of the all-knowing state. Such scary number you’d imagine should be causing uproar or some major changes, but most of it is largely swept under the rug or ignored. As one writer put it, “we have lost 4600 people, yet nobody is even talking about it”.

One did make the headlines last year though, in the state of Kansas where over 70 children were reportedly missing. Perhaps the most shocking thing about the report (as shocking as the headline was) was the relatively lax nature the officials responded to demands for explanations of such harrowing figures. Some of them were quoted saying that it was “well in line with the national average”, whatever the hell that means (pardon my cussing). Rather than accept responsibility, as they would expect from parents whose kids are forcefully taken away – the agencies chief, Phyllis Gilmore instead sought to shift the blame to parents by alleging that some of the kids were on the run with their biological parents. That statement brings up so many questions that reek of hypocrisy in the system. Shouldn’t the system be called to question for separating kids who obviously love their parents do not want to be separated from them despite the nosssyness of the state?

In Florida, five year old Rilya Wilson went missing for over a year before anyone noticed. Both the case worker and supervisor who were supposed to be in charge of monitoring were nowhere to be found. This isn’t a case in isolation as far as Florida is concerned, with hundred of kids reportedly missing. What I find upsetting is that these missing kids are simply added to the statistic of kids lost in the system.

I do not even single out the case workers or supervisors to fault for this tragedy, as they often do parents. Rather, the child welfare system as a whole is a mess; one which rewards the state for nonchalance and calls for a holistic review.