WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Representatives Tony Gonzales (R-TX-23) and Shontel Brown (D-OH-11), along with U.S. Representatives Erin Houchin (R-IN-9), Gwen Moore (D-WI-4), Don Bacon (R-NE-2), Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA-5), Dan Newhouse (R-WA-4), and Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA-37) introduced the Find and Protect Foster Youth Act on Thursday. This bipartisan legislation seeks to create an improved feedback mechanism between states and the Administration of Children and Families (ACF) to provide better oversight and information-sharing related tomissing and runaway foster youth. Read the full text of the bill here.
“Far too many foster children have gone off the radar in Texas and across the nation,” said Rep. Gonzales. “These vulnerable children are at risk of being sexually exploited or harmed, and lawmakers must do more to prevent them from slipping through the cracks of our broken foster care system. I am proud to introduce this bipartisan legislation to improve communication between state and federal agencies to guarantee the safety of our most vulnerable of children.”
“All children in our foster system deserve to be protected and properly cared for,” said Rep. Brown. “The Find and Protect Foster Youth Act addresses gaps in our foster system by establishing an improved feedback loop between states and the federal government to better care for children and prevent runaways, and to strengthen reporting requirements. Crucially, it also provides sex trafficking screening for children who return to foster care after an absence. We must do all we can to ensure the safety and welfare of our foster youth in Northeast Ohio and across the country.”
“I have been contending for children involved with the Department of Child Services in Indiana for many years. Through that work, I have seen firsthand the challenges in our foster care system and that experience has had a major impact on my legislative priorities in Congress. It cannot be the new normal that thousands of children in foster care go missing every year, many of which are falsely recorded as runaways and as a result never found. That’s why I cosponsored the Find and Protect Foster Youth Act to evaluate existing protocols and identify obstacles in the way of finding these missing children. Above all, we must make sure these vulnerable children are located and made safe,” said Rep. Houchin.
Under current practice, states are required to implement plans to prevent, mitigate, and find cases of missing foster youth. However, tens of thousands of foster children have gone missing over the last two decades. This proposal would require the ACF to study shortcomings in the process of identifying and responding to incidents of missing children in existing state foster care systems; establish screenings for children returned to foster care to determine if they were victims of sex trafficking in their absence from foster care; and require a report to Congress on the results of the evaluation of each state’s protocol and the assistance provided to them.
This legislation has also been introduced in the Senate by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).