Kentucky’s Missing Children Problem: Last in Nation with Percentage of Kids in Foster Care who are Placed with Relatives

There are more than 9,000 Kentucky children in state care right now spending an average of 22 months moving between three different home placements. According to data compiled by the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, there were 121 foster children statewide listed as AWOL, Absent Without Leave in November. Forty-nine of them, almost half the statewide total, were listed as AWOL in just one county: Jefferson. “Been in out of home placement for years and years,” Gross said. “They go from foster home to residential care to hospitals and a lot of time they just lose hope, like why ever bother trying.” “Our fence, it’s easy to just jump the fence and go,” Home of the Innocents program manager Rick Isaiah said. “So it happens quite a bit. I think they want to go home.” The fence at Home of the Innocents may be easy to jump, but the problem goes far beyond this place. And it’s not about a fence. Many believe it is about home. Or at least family. Or relatives. And further investigation reveals that’s not a priority here when it comes to foster child placement. In fact, Kentucky ranks 50th, last in the nation in the percentage of kids in foster care who are placed with relatives. Seventy-five percent are placed in homes with non-relatives. And the percentages of child placements with relatives in Kentucky has been dropping steadily for years. What's at stake in all this? The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found that of the 18,500 runaways reported, 1 in 6 were likely victims of child sex trafficking, and of those, 86 percent were in the care of social services. "We’ve had situations where a kid has AWOL’d and come back a day or two later and they’ve been molested or raped or used for drugs, sex, things like that,” Isaiah said.

Investigative Report in Kentucky Reveals Corruption Still Exists in Foster Care as Children Die or Go Missing

The corruption in Kentucky Child Protection Services and Foster Care has been reported on extensively here at Health Impact News since 2015. A new report aired on Wave 3 News by investigative journalist John Boel reveals that corruption in the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services is apparently ongoing, as one child was allegedly murdered by his foster parent after being taken away from his family, and another foster parent is blowing the whistle on the abuses of Kentucky foster care where children go missing due to lack of oversight. The current investigation began in 2017, when 4-year-old Hunter Payton died in foster care, and his biological parents questioned the story put forward as to the cause of his death, which was reported to be an accident. “They told us it was an ‘unlikely’ injury,” Hunter’s mother April Payton said. “It doesn’t happen. Something hit him hard.” He had only been in foster care for 3 months. During that time, the parents allegedly complained to the state about bruising on their son, and they were apparently told several different stories about how he died in an accidental fall. As John Boel reports: "Months after our report, Billy Embry-Martin, 33, was charged with murder. The lawsuit accuses him and his husband, Travis Embry-Martin, of 'violent punishment, physical abuse and denial of food.' Billy Embry-Martin is free on bond awaiting a December trial on the murder charge."