Maryland Placed Foster Children With Sex Offenders And A Convicted Murderer
'Abhorrent' audit 'reveals shocking recklessness in the care of foster children.'
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Maryland Gov. Wes Moore (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Maryland’s foster care programs failed to perform background checks, leading to 10 children living in foster homes with sex offenders and a convicted murderer being paid to provide “one-on-one” care for children in hotels, a new audit found.
Auditors from the Maryland General Assembly’s Department of Legislative Services found pervasive problems, including the fact that up to 38% of foster children may not even be attending school, despite the state claiming in its database that virtually all children were in school.
In one case, Maryland claimed to have reviewed a group foster home in 2023, but did not flag that it was employing a man who had been convicted of sexual assault on a minor in 2014, the audit said. Three months after the bungled review, the sex offender “allegedly transported three foster care children for inappropriate activity,” and was “subsequently charged with crimes involving children under his care.”
Even then, the Maryland Department of Human Services’s Social Services Administration (SSA) “could not document any corrective action as a result of this incident to ensure the criminal background checks were in fact obtained,” the
audit found.
Auditors were able to detect what the social service agencies did not by simply comparing the sex offender registry with a list of foster homes.
“For example, one individual convicted of sexual misconduct with a minor had the same address as a guardianship home with 4 children between the ages of 4 and 8. SSA was not aware of any of these individuals until we provided them our match results,” the audit found.
Maryland’s foster care programs failed to perform background checks, leading to 10 children living in foster homes with sex offenders and a convicted murderer being paid to provide “one-on-one” care for children in hotels, a new audit found.Auditors from the Maryland General Assembly’s...
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