Children dying at alarming rates in foster care

[outsider]

'Children dying at alarming rates in foster care, and nobody is bothering to investigate':
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/18/foster-care-children-deaths-mentor -network/

'CHILDREN IN THE for-profit foster care system are dying at alarming rates, but the deaths are not being investigated, and autopsies are not even being attached to the now-closed case files, a two-year investigation has found.

The investigation, conducted and released in rare bipartisan fashion by the Senate Finance Committee, looked closely at one of the largest private providers of foster care services, the MENTOR Network.

The companies and agencies charged with keeping foster children safe often failed to provide the most basic protections or take steps to prevent tragedies, the investigation found.

In the wake of the report, shares of the MENTOR Network’s parent company, Civitas Solutions, traded sharply downward, but quickly rebounded amid a lack of press coverage....'

'....The report was prompted in part by a BuzzFeed investigation into the company two years ago. The committee found that 86 children had died in the company’s care over a 10-year period, and the firm had conducted internal investigations in only 13 cases.....'

'...Roughly 1,600 children die each year due to abuse and neglect, the committee reported....'

'...The investigation found that MENTOR did not investigate fatalities; the vast majority of children who died were not the subject of internal investigations even when the death was unexpected, and pending autopsy reports were excluded from files.

‘‘The MENTOR Network serves significantly more children and youth with heightened risk factors relative to others in foster care, and sustains child mortality rates that are comparable with national norms,” the company told the committee.

The panel, however, dubbed that claim “false,” noting its death rate among foster children was found to be 42 percent higher than the national average....'