Years After Rilya Wilson’s Disappearance, 652 Foster Kids Missing in Florida

Years After Rilya Wilson’s Disappearance, 652 Foster Kids Missing in
Florida

Date: Thursday, June 08, 2006
By: Associated Press and BlackAmericaWeb. com

The disappearance of four-year-old Rilya Wilson in 2001 spurred a
state effort to track down hundreds of children missing from
Florida foster care, but those numbers have gone up again in recent
years, a newspaper reported this week.

Florida child welfare officials confirmed Tuesday that 652 children in
the foster care system were unaccounted for. Most are believed
to be runaways, although some may have been taken by their biological
parents.

In December 2002, following Wilson's vanishing, state officials
announced that their efforts had reduced the number of unaccounted
for foster children from about 400 to just over 100. The Miami Herald
reported Tuesday that that number had since risen more than six
fold.

Part of that rise can be attributed to stepped-up efforts to quickly
identify when a foster child a missing, Zoraya Suarez, a
spokeswoman for the state Department of Children & Families, told the
Associated Press on Tuesday.

The disappearance of Wilson, whose body was never been recovered, had
gone unnoticed by the social services system for 15
months. Geralyn Graham, the woman who was supposed to be taking care
of her, was charged with murdering her. Graham was also
charged with kidnapping and three counts of aggravated child abuse in
the case of the girl, who was suffocated or beaten to death
sometime in December 2000, the grand jury indictment said.

Child advocates say conditions have improved over the past few years
after some shocking cases -- particularly Wilson's -- brought
the issue into the spotlight.

"I think that the state takes their job as a parent very seriously,"
Florida Department of Child Services commissioner, Darlene Dunbar
told ABC News. "Can we improve? Absolutely."

Suarez said the disappearance of children from foster care systems was
a national problem. She said the national average for
children going missing from state foster care systems was about two
percent -- above Florida's 1.3 percent.

Children's advocates say the state could still do more.

"The kids are out on the streets," Howard Talenfeld, president of
Florida's Children First, told the Herald. "Yet the state still
doesn't
pursue this with the kind of urgency that is necessary."

Suarez said DCF's policy is to notify the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement within four hours any time a child is found to be
missing. In some situations, officials may also notify the National
Center for Missing and Exploited Children to publicize the case
nationally, she said.

California, Tennessee and Michigan have all admitted they had lost
track of children in their care. Florida has one of the highest
numbers, with 652 missing children.

"It's a very serious concern," Millicent Williams of the Child Welfare
League of America told ABC News. "One of the complications in
addressing this problem is the lack of sufficient social workers
available to really track children. It's also the lack of a
computerized
systems within agencies to do an accurate tracking of kids."

Meanwhile, the Government Accountability Office is starting an
investigation into the causes behind the disproportionate
representation of blacks and other children of color in the foster
care system.

"There’s certainly bias in the system in the way we come in and who
gets services," Ralph Bayard, director of diversity for Casey
Family Programs, told BlackAmericaWeb. com.

"The national data is really not capturing or telling the story, in
terms of the causes" of disproportionate placements, Bayard said.
"There’s no empirical data to say racism is it; a lot of things are
leaning towards that ... but you’ve got to have the data that speaks
to
it."

He said that more than 800,000 children come through the foster care
system annually and that, at any point during the year, there can
be as many as 500,000 children in care. Black children represent 38 to
42 percent of those placements, more than double their
presence in the general population.

According to a report last year by the state Department of Human
Services, black children enter the foster care system at a higher
rate, stay in the system longer and are reunited with their families
less often than others.

Foster children in large cities also are usually minorities, in part
because those cities have large minority populations. Ninety-five
percent of children in Chicago's child welfare system are minorities,
while 90 percent in New York's system in 1997 were minorities,
research showed.

Bill Long, an attorney and the former head of the Lansing-based
Michigan Federation for Children and Families, said the high number
of minorities in the foster care system is caused by higher rates of
poverty, school expulsions, inadequate housing and limited
options for child care in those communities.

He suggested that counties with a big gap between minority and white
foster children be required to reach out to minority
communities and to use the policies that have been successful in
counties where the number of white and minority foster children are
more closely balanced.

According to the National Foster Parent Association, the
organization’s first concern is to ensure that no child suffers harm
while in
foster care. The association does acknowledge that some foster parents
are capable of maltreatment.

"Currently, an estimated 168,000 foster families are providing care
for more than 743,000 children in placement across the nation, and
this number is steadily increasing," according to the organization’s
website. "

"These children are frequently exhibiting a wide variety of behavioral
problems, including making false allegations of abuse toward
their foster/adoptive parents," the website said. "Research has shown
that children who have been abused, particularly children who
were sexually abused, may make false abuse allegations against
subsequent parents or caregivers."

"It is estimated that, as of 1997, there was a 1 in 8 chance of having
false abuse or neglect allegations made against foster and/or
adoptive parents," the website said. "This number is growing and, in
some areas of the nation, has increased by as much as 400
percent."
http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site....news/wilson608

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