Posted on: Sunday, July 3, 2005

Vanished

•	Missing children as of May 31, 2005
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By Mike Gordon
Advertiser Staff Writer

The state is missing dozens of foster children, all of them runaways whose young lives are scarred by abuse and neglect.

Through the end of May, 38 foster children could not be accounted for, according to statistics from the state Department of Human Services. Most of them disappeared in the first five months of this year, but three have been missing since the fall of 2003.

All of them are teenagers. The ranks of the missing, however, have had younger children. Earlier this year, a pair of 12-year-olds were missing — one for several weeks, the other since December.

The department's Child Welfare Services Branch, responsible for the well-being of children in foster custody, has no idea if the missing children are living in a safe home or on the streets.

All of them were reported to police as runaways and it is the job of law enforcement officials to find them, said Amy Tsark, administrator for the Child Welfare Services Branch.

Social workers cannot search for the children full time because they are often juggling case loads that range from 40 to 80 children, Tsark said.

"I really do not expect my child welfare workers to go hunting for these children," Tsark said. "Their job is not a job to drive around the street. But I do think my staff makes a very concerted effort to call on leads."

Tsark expects her staff to call police as soon as possible in every case, she said.

"The priority is making that phone call to the police and getting law enforcement involved," she said. "A child welfare worker is here to protect the children from harm. But we can't do it all."

There is no centralized list of all the missing children, and it isn't clear how often foster children run away. Tsark compiled the list of missing children at the request of The Advertiser. The state cares for nearly 2,500 foster children on any given day.

On O'ahu, which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the missing children, no special effort is made by police to find them. Once they run away, they are part of the 1,000 runaway children the Honolulu Police Department's Juvenile Services Division investigates annually. And it's a daunting task: HPD has five officers assigned to the runaway detail.

"We try to develop any leads and further them," said Maj. Kevin Shigemitsu, head of the division. "We check known hang-out spots and locations."

Shigemitsu could not confirm how many of the 38 missing foster children were part of his list of runaways, but said it was not uncommon for a child to be missing for months, or even a year. And the number can change from week to week.

"We continuously maintain our files," he said. "We review whatever new leads we have and do follow up."

Until this April, social workers were not required to call police immediately and instead were given latitude to try to locate the child, said human services director Lillian Koller.

But on April 29 Koller told child welfare services workers that they had one working day to report a missing child to police, inform the child's biological parents and seek media publicity to help locate the child.

The change was possible after the agency approved administrative rules last December to allow it to open records without a court order if a child is missing.

The media's help had always been an option but could not be requested without permission from the Family Court and that process could take weeks.

The strict confidentiality that governs child abuse and neglect cases in Family Court kept social workers from seeking public help, Koller said. Her staff did not want to publicly identify lost children and would instead use their resources to try to find the child, Koller said.

"It is part of that culture of confidentiality which was well intended to protect the child, but backfires," she said.

The director said she wants to have discussions with the state law enforcement coalition and the attorney general to learn how police respond to runaway cases and what they do to find them.

"These children need parental supervision," Koller said. "They are minors. And more than that, they are troubled minors. Victims. They tend to be self-destructive and get themselves into trouble."

State Rep. Dennis Arakaki, D-30th (Moanalua, Kalihi Valley, 'Alewa), said officials have given up on these children — and that the children have given up on authorities assigned to help them.

"In the circle of advocates, they consider these throwaway kids," he said. "The parent abandons them. The system abandons them. And basically, they don't want to go back, either."

Complicating the problem is that many are chronic runaways.

"The police always say they are tired of getting these kids," Arakaki said. "They return them to home and they are right back on the street again."

State human services officials said that children have been found much faster since they began publishing requests for help this spring. And because staffers must report missing children quickly, the agency now has a centralized list of who is missing.

Koller said the state has not given up on these children.

"It's not OK to have missing children, to have these runaway teens," she said.

Cynthia White, the coordinator for the Hawai'i Foster Youth Coalition and a former foster child, said the number of missing foster children in Hawai'i is "alarming."

But social workers do make an effort to find them, posting fliers in neighborhoods and driving through communities and talking to friends when they have the chance, White said.

"They take steps to find the youth, but I don't know how long they continue that process. And I don't know what is done when they are not successful."

Children run away for a reason, White said. "It is not that the foster homes are bad, it is just not their home," she said. "And they may have issues from abuse or neglect and so they are having issues of anxiety."

Being in a foster home doesn't eliminate the anxiety, but running away gives them a sense of power over their lives, she said.

"It is very frightening to be out there on the streets. But when you are in foster care there is not much difference between being afraid while you are in care and afraid while you are on the street. But at least out on the street, I am choosing my fear."

Not everyone is convinced that the plight of these foster children should become a public matter. The stigma attached to child abuse has kept this information from the public.

Judy Clark, executive director of Hawai'i Youth Services Network, said the public has no idea how many children are missing. But even though the streets are a harsh place where youths trade sex for food and shelter, and beatings and rapes are common, Clark isn't sure the public should be told.

"It is a very fine line between protecting the privacy of the youth and at the same time, if they are missing, the need to get the community involved in finding them," she said. "Truthfully, I don't know where you should draw the line."

Frances Wong, a senior Family Court judge on O'ahu, said the number of missing foster children is low in relation to a community of nearly a million.

"If you are looking at the number and asking: Should we be concerned?" Wong said. "Of course. Each number represents a child. But you have to ask: What does this mean about our system?"

Officials have to learn why foster children are running away, she said. "We should look around as a community to see what institutions are we capable of making stronger."

But Wong shares Clark's concern over putting names and photographs in the newspaper.

"You want to either give them a chance to come in or give the adults who are harboring them a chance to come in," Wong said. "But there is always a point where a judge or a social worker or someone says this is enough."

At the Department of Human Services, that time has come, Tsark said. Getting missing children back to a safe home outweighs previously held concerns for privacy.

Make no mistake, she said: This is a major change in the way the department deals with the issue.

"We want to immediately be able to go to the media for assistance in locating these children," Tsark said. "There is a high sense of urgency that we have to do this right away."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8012.