Number of Florida foster kids, who are vanishing, is skyrocketing [View All]

MIAMI - When the disappearance of a 5-year-old girl from her Miami foster home four years ago went unnoticed for months, the ensuing scandal that engulfed Florida's child-welfare agency led to recriminations and promises of beefed-up efforts to track down children who went missing from state care.

A few months later, Gov. Jeb Bush and his social-services chief declared "success," saying the state had found all but 102 of about 400 foster children who had gone missing.

That was Dec. 17, 2002.

Yet as of Monday, the number of kids missing from the state's troubled child-welfare system has skyrocketed to 652, most of them runaway teens and youngsters snatched from foster care by their biological parents. The number of missing kids has risen even as the number of kids in state care has declined.

snip