Illinois child welfare agency to update number of missing children
[October 27, 2025]
By Greg Bishop | The Center Square
(The Center Square) – The number of missing foster children on the radar
of the state’s child welfare agency will be clarified this week as a
potential Illinois Statehouse candidate looks for answers.
Public records obtained by Bailey Templeton from the Illinois Department
of Children and Family Services show in 2023, 16 children did not return
to either previous placement or a new one. That number jumped 935% to
166 missing children in 2024.
An agency spokesperson told The Center Square the numbers are “not
completely accurate.” Updated numbers were not immediately available
through public records requests.
Separate open records requests from both Templeton and The Center Square
for updated numbers from the agency were due Friday. The agency delayed
the release, saying “the requested records have not been located in the
course of routine search and additional efforts are being made to locate
them.”
“The records were due to be produced within five business days of
October 24, 2025,” DCFS Freedom of Information Act told The Center
Square in an email. “I have requested the documents from the necessary
division, and it is still working to gather documents, and the FOIA
Office is still working to review the documents as well.”
Templeton told The Center Square there needs to be answers.
“Something has happened in the past two years that has made it either
easier to lose foster children, or the followthrough or the tracking of
these foster children is not being property done,” Templeton said. “So,
we’re missing a large amount of children and I feel like this should be
getting attention that children are missing and that accountability and
oversight should be happening as well.”
A spokesperson for the agency said they want to ensure that they release
the “most accurate information” and that there is a “narrative” around
the data to be publicly released.
The agency noted it has a Child Intake Recovery Unit, an entire division
dedicated to assisting caseworkers in locating missing youth. The
spokesperson also said they do track the youth in care that do go
missing by where they are placed, how many days they are missing and the
date.
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The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services building is
shown in Springfield. Photo: Greg Bishop / The Center Square
“Many of our children who are missing go missing from our group of homes
or residential facilities,” the spokesperson said.
Templeton is demanding there be an outside audit of the issue.
“To look at what’s going on with these children, to see if these
children that are missing are receiving any state or federal benefits,
where that money is going, things of that such,” she said.
“Specifically, we need to find these children.”
In a recent management audit of DCFS’s search for missing children, one
recommendation made by the Illinois Auditor General in 2014 was
partially implemented by 2024. The auditor’s report said 71% of
instances they checked where a child went missing, the initial forms
could not be provided by the department to ensure accuracy.
“Department Procedure 329, Locating and Returning Missing, Runaway, and
Abducted Children, provides the documentation of supervisor reviews
through the submission of the CFS 1014 form,” the report said. “As a
result of the Department being unable to provide the 43 initial CFS 1014
forms noted above, the auditors also could not test documentation of
supervisor reviews.”
When a child goes missing, the agency told The Center Square it reports
the matter to local law enforcement, the caseworker provides as much
identifying information as possible, to include finger prints if
available, and they contact the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children, among other steps.
In another partially implemented recommendation from the 2024 management
audit, the auditor general’s office found that in only 15% of instances
where a child went missing, the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children were notified within three hours of when a child was
reported missing. |
