Why child agencies lose kids

One expert tells of a caseworker he knew who accidentally left five case files in his car, which was stolen – essentially erasing those children from public record. Then, last week, a reporter in Florida bought a box of old reports from the Department of Children and Families that was accidentally put up for auction.

"A certain amount of computerization has reduced the problem, but not eliminated it," says Richard Gelles of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

To others, however, the problems go much deeper. Some managers have become more lenient toward staff workers who can't keep up with their scheduled visits and there are few consequences for missed appointments. After all, the number of children in states' care nationwide has more than doubled to nearly 600,000 during the past seven years, and workers are being pushed to their limits.

"Sometimes supervisors, in an attempt to be supportive, will overlook things," says Linda Spears of the Child Welfare League of America in Washington.

The federal government has tried to make states and counties more accountable by linking federal money to improvements in data collection and case reviews. But the changes have been incremental. The most sweeping reforms have come in places like New York and Kansas City, Mo., where governments have been moved by public outrage or the hand of the law.

Even there, though, the pace has not been brisk. A common thread has been patience and persistence. Jackson County, which includes Kansas City and its environs, has been striving to improve since 1978, when activists first filed a lawsuit against the county. After years of motions and decrees, a new and pioneering child-welfare system is taking shape.

The changes are simple, but in the largely unregulated world of foster care, they are substantial: Background checks of foster parents, expanded and more in-depth case reviews, a quality-assurance team that not only checks to see if workers did their jobs, but also evaluates how well they did them.

Some of the same reforms are at work in New York, which in many ways offers the closest parallel to what is happening in Florida. After the death of foster child Elisa Izquierdo seven years ago, the city essentially rebuilt its child-welfare system from scratch by paying more attention to foster children and putting more emphasis on holding workers and supervisors responsible.

"It was a series of very basic changes [such as data collection and training] that put them in a position to make dramatic changes," says John Mattingly of the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. "It's a good example. If you can do it in New York, you'll be able to do it in a system that's not as big and unwieldy."

Georgia has begun to take some similar steps after Terrell Peterson was killed while under foster care two years ago, and a blue ribbon panel has suggested similar action for Florida. Whether the state acts on those recommendations is unclear, but it will have a hard time ignoring them.

"When there is a terrible story about a child, it brings the problem home in a way numbers do not," says Ms. Lowry. "The fact that this is focusing attention on the system may be helpful in protecting other children."

• Jennifer LeClaire contributed to this report from Miami.

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