Analysis: Nearly 1,800 children in the state’s care went missing | Georgia

(The Center Square) — U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia, launched a discovering from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that discovered 1,790 children in the care of the Georgia Division of Family & Children Services have been reported missing between 2018 and 2022.

“These numbers are deeply troubling because these are more than numbers. These are children,” Ossoff mentioned in a statement. “And children who go missing from care are left more vulnerable to human trafficking, to sexual exploitation and to other threats to their health and safety.”

“This is about human beings,” Ossoff added. “This is about vulnerable children who deserve protection from abuse, who deserve sanctuary from neglect. And that is why I will continue relentlessly to investigate failures to protect the most vulnerable children in our state.”

A DFCS spokeswoman didn’t reply to a request for touch upon the discovering. A spokeswoman for Lt. Governor Burt Jones, a Republican, declined to remark, deferring to Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, whose place of business didn’t reply to a request for remark.

In February, Ossoff mentioned he introduced an inquiry into experiences that Georgia officers have failed the children in their care. Ossoff and U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, despatched a letter to the state’s DFCS wondering the company’s skill to offer protection to children in their care.

Additionally, the Senate Study Committee on Foster Care and Adoption is exploring imaginable answers to support the state’s foster care device and plans to make suggestions for lawmakers to imagine. The state has kind of 11,000 children in its foster care on any given day.

During a committee listening to closing month, Candice Broce, commissioner of the Department of Human Services and director of the DFCS, mentioned that on Sept. 8, the state had no foster children in resorts. Last 12 months, the state spent $28 million to deal with children in resorts, infrequently for months.

Separately, all over a Monday listening to in Atlanta, Paulding County Juvenile Court Judge Carolyn Altman testified the company is “resisting high mental health needs children” and recounted a gathering she attended in August with kind of 30 different judges and DFCS management.

“DFCS Commissioner [Candice] Broce said that DFCS was not set up to be caregivers for these high mental health needs children,” Altman mentioned in a ready opening statement.

“She asked judges to consider detaining these children — locking them up in a juvenile detention center — for a few days so that DFCS could maybe look for placements,” Altman added. “As judges we do not lock children up, and especially not special-needs kids, because DFCS can’t find a placement for them.”