Alleykins
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- Feb 28, 2016
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The foster care system is flawed. I'm assuming before the internet state to state communication was even worse. Missing in the foster system could mean the kid went back to their family. Their social worker usually checks out those areas and local police are told to look out for the kid. This is if the foster parents report a missing kid. If someone regularly runs away they aren't going to be a high priority. The foster parents might give them a day or two to come back. It complicates things when they are running to family more often than not. Hitchhiking for 24 hours could get them over a thousand miles away.
Also once kids age out of the system at 18 they are on their own. It would be easy to slip through the cracks.
This is what happened to Patricia Taylor. Her family didn't even know she'd run away, I think they believed she'd been adopted, that was why no one had heard from her. She wasn't. It doesn't appear the state of OK looked for her. In all fairness, they may have but didn't note it. What it looks like is she ran away, and when she didn't come back, they simply closed out her file and called it good when she aged out of the system. God bless her sister, she's been looking for her ever since they found out.