Finding Missing and Trafficked Children

Each year, more than 20,000 children disappear from state care. In many states, authorities fail to report or search for these children. We press for laws that ensure the system acts with urgency, using every tool available, until every missing child is found and safely returned.

The problem…

Disappearing: An entire city’s worth of children—20,000 every year—vanish from foster care, often with no one searching.

How we’re solving it…

Events & Testimonies

  • Testimony: U.S. House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor

    Chairman Aderholt, Ranking Member DeLauro, and Members of the Subcommittee: My name is Brad Galbraith, and I serve as Policy Director at the Center for the Rights of Abused Children, [...]

Op-Eds

  • Foster care children are easy prey for predators: They disappear without a real search

    Read more here.

  • How can social services lose 18,000 children – and not look for them?

    Read more here.

Research & Reports

  • olson

    New Report Declares Constitutional Crisis in Foster Care System, Demands Urgent Federal Reforms

    In a searing new memo released today, Lives in the Balance: A Bold Plan to Fix America’s Broken Child Protection System, the Center for the Rights of Abused Children lays bare an unflinching truth:

  • Serve Pro Bono

    Rescuing Missing and Trafficked

    Last year an estimated 20,000 American children went missing from their foster care placements and group homes. Join us on zoom to learn more about the reforms we’ve helped advance [...]

  • Missing Trafficked Toolkit

    We are driven to ensure the safety of the tens of thousands of children who go missing from foster care every year. The Center successfully passed state legislation requiring child [...]

  • Fact Sheet: Recognizing Abused Children’s Right to Counsel

    The fundamental rights of children are at stake in abuse and neglect court proceedings. Courts have the power to remove children from their homes, determine who they live with, for [...]

  • Disappearing and Dying

    Why 20,000 kids disappear from foster care every year and how to end this crisis. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Anaiah Walker was 15 when she went missing from Arizona’s foster care system [...]

  • Girl walking down street

    Center for the Rights of Abused Children (formerly Gen Justice) releases new brief, “Disappearing and Dying”

    Gen Justice released a new brief, 'Disappearing and Dying' about the 20,000 kids who disappear from foster care every year and how to end crisis.

Resources & Tools

  • Missing Trafficked Toolkit

    We are driven to ensure the safety of the tens of thousands of children who go missing from foster care every year. The Center successfully passed state legislation requiring child welfare agencies to actively and continually search for children missing from their care until they are found. Read more here.

Podcasts & Audio

Television & Video

Model Reforms

  • The adoption process can be slow, sometimes taking longer than a year. This largely administrative activity swallows precious time that foster children, especially older kids, don’t have to waste. Older kids are among the most difficult to place in a permanent home and face terrible odds without a family. Twenty-five percent of children who “age [...]