Illinois’s child welfare agency says it’s doing a better job of tracking youth who run away.
That’s after an audit showed the Department of Children and Family Services was failing to keep tabs on those young people.
George Sheldon, the head of the agency, says runaways tend to be teenagers who have low self-esteem with few relatives to turn to - and sometimes are victims of human trafficking.
“These are the perfect victims,” Sheldon said. “So I think we have stepped up our game.”
The agency reports about 31-hundred wards of the state went missing for a period of time between 2011 and 2012.