COUNTY ORDERS FOSTER KID COUNT.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

Alarmed by a state audit that found that 912 children had been abducted from Los Angeles County's foster care system in 1999-2001, the Board of Supervisors ordered a report Tuesday to find out how many children are still missing and what steps have been taken to locate them.

``Currently, we have 250 children who are still missing,'' said Karen Strickland, executive director of Find the Children, a Los Angeles nonprofit group that works to find missing children. ``These are mostly young children who were abducted by their parents or older children who are AWOL from foster care. Of young children abducted by parents, there have been thousands of cases in the last six years.''

Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, author of the motion asking for the report, said a substantial number of the county's nearly 55,000 foster children are missing and that the Department of Children and Family Services simply cannot account for their whereabouts.

A March audit by the state controller's office concluded that data problems with the child welfare system precluded the department from locating a foster child about 8 percent of the time.

Last week, the supervisors ordered the DCFS to investigate the feasibility of keeping photographs and fingerprints of foster children to better assist law enforcement if a child is abducted.

Strickland said she went to former DCFS Director Peter Digre six years ago and asked that the department photograph and fingerprint every foster child, but it wasn't until recently that Juvenile Court Presiding Judge Michael Nash ordered court officers to make sure to have a photo in the file of every child who enters the court system.

In March, state Controller Kathleen Connell released an audit of the foster care system, stating that 340 children had been abducted from the county's foster care system in 1999, with 274 recovered. In 2000, 324 children had been abducted and 228 recovered. As of Nov. 30, 2001, 248 children were abducted and 309 recovered, including some in pre-2001 cases.

Connell wrote that the county's tracking system for finding missing children is ``weak.''

In her written response to Connell's report, outgoing DCFS Director Anita Bock said the report does not make note of children who are not in foster homes but in the custody of a parent, relative, caretaker or guardian.

``These incidents can include everything from parents who do not show up for hearings with their children to relatives who move without alerting their social workers,'' Bock wrote.