By Greg Bishop | The Center Square
The Center Square

(The Center Square) – So far this calendar year, Illinois’ child welfare agency reports 193 missing youth in care, an increase from the total number from the prior year.

On Oct. 21, The Center Square requested public records from the Department of Children and Family Services to show the number of missing youth in care with whereabouts unknown per year since 2019.

Numbers Statehouse candidate Bailey Templeton said she received from a Freedom of Information Act request showed 16 did not return to their previous placement in 2023, but jumped nearly 1,000% to 166 missing children in 2024. The agency said previous numbers the agency released were “not completely accurate.”

Earlier this month, the agency’s FOIA officer told The Center Square “Once the documents are located, assuming they exist, the FOIA office will review and release records as appropriate.”

Weeks after The Center Square’s initial FOIA request for the numbers, the agency’s communications director, not the FOIA officer, provided updated numbers.

Templeton said the numbers she received early last month are “completely blown out” by the latest release from the agency.

“We’ve got a more accurate number of children missing every single year,” Templeton told The Center Square Monday. “Considering in my numbers they said there were 1 to 2 missing in the prior years, your FOIA response, or your director of communication’s response shows hundreds of children missing every single year.”

Data the agency provided to The Center Square Friday show 222 youth in care missing with whereabouts unknown in 2019. Of that total, 22 were categorized as “Whereabouts Unknown, Continuing Contact (child/youth has contacted their caseworker but will not disclose their location).”

The numbers of missing children peaked in 2021 for a total of 284, 23 of which have been contacted but whereabouts were unknown.

The number of missing children for 2025, through Oct. 9, is 193, 26 of which were listed as continuing contact but their location not being disclosed.

In total, DCFS data show a peak of 5,864 instances of missing youth in 2020, with 5,607 instances of located/recovered youth in that year. The agency said some children may go missing more than once per year, but then come back.

“I think what we have here is evidence that I was provided different numbers than the press,” Templeton said. “I think that is a huge failure in oversight because if you are providing false numbers to American citizens or Illinois citizens versus the press, it shows such a huge discrepancy, how can we trust the state agency?”

Templeton is calling for a full audit of the issue, as previous Auditor General audits haven’t brought progress in transparency.

“They are not changing what they need to do to fix it,” Templeton said. “And in past years of audits, you can see how many times they’ve failed to do what they’re supposed to do. And then it’s a repeating problem the next year in the audit. So whether we need a complete reform or what exactly we need to do to make sure that these children are safe, I’m willing to push for that.”

The agency said it has a dedicated unit for tracking and finding missing children.

“If a youth is missing, our priority is their safety,” the agency said.

Templeton is running for the 94th Illinois House District. The primary is March 17.