States lose track of thousands of foster children each year

Sharday Hamilton, a 28-year-old advocate for foster youth, homeless youth and runaways, still bears her own scars from running. There’s one near her left knee. She got it as a little girl, running away from her foster mother, who was trying to hit her with a bag of frozen food but who sometimes used a skillet or a baseball bat. There are the burns she suffered when she was forced to sit on a hot stove. Caseworkers and school counselors didn’t visit Hamilton’s foster home in Harvey, Illinois, or check in with her often enough, recalled Hamilton, now a mentor at the National Network for Youth, a...