SAN ANTONIO – Runaway foster children often fall into the hands of traffickers or other toxic people. A bipartisan group of federal lawmakers is trying to change that by creating a new bill to help find thousands of missing foster kids and treat them for trauma once they return.
For advocates in the foster care space, the priority is always to prevent runaway foster kids.
“We are looking at their healthy relationships. How can we build community around these youth so that they’re not looking to run away to something?” said Tara Roussett, the CEO of SJRC and its Belong division.
SJRC Texas focuses on foster care and helping families affected by abuse and neglect. Their Belong division serves as the lead provider for Community-Based Care in Region 8b, which covers 27 Texas counties.
Roussett said kids often run toward people they think love them. Those people usually end up being toxic acquaintances or family members, or even sex traffickers.
“We work with special investigators through the state to go out and try to find the youth and then try to get them to come back,” Roussett said.
That’s what they’re legally required to do, but not all agencies in the country, or even in Texas, are doing that.
“There’s some states that do it better than others. And from a federal standpoint, I think we should be assisting the states and making sure they have all the tools that they need to succeed,” said U.S. Congressman Tony Gonzales, who represents District 23, including San Antonio.
“My wife spent time as a foster child, so it’s important to our family,” he said.
Gonzales joined a bipartisan group sponsoring the Find and Protect Foster Youth Act.
“We’ve got 6-8 members on the House side, and that number will grow, and we also have companions in the Senate side,” Gonzales said.
The act would do the following:
- Identify obstacles in responding to missing foster children
- Develop best practices for assessing the children who return
“Determine why they ran away, what happened when they were gone, and make sure to get ahead of the next problem instead of letting this endless cycle occur in the foster system,” Gonzales said.
Roussett said SJRC Texas is already doing that and will give Congress that input.
“If they have been a confirmed victim of child sex trafficking, we match them with a placement that’s going to provide for those needs, to give them that safety that they need in a specialized program as well. They don’t just go in back into foster care,” Roussett said.
She’d be thrilled with a law that would require and fund these actions nationwide.
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