A state audit released on September 12th, 2025, has found that Maryland’s Social Services Administration (SSA) repeatedly failed to protect children in its care between May 2020 and May 2024, allowing them to live in unsafe environments, miss essential medical care, and, in hundreds of cases, be placed in hotels under unlicensed supervision. The fiscal compliance review, conducted by the Office of Legislative Audits, marks the third consecutive time the agency has received an “unsatisfactory” accountability rating. Auditors said SSA failed to resolve six of eight findings from the prior audit, some of which have persisted since 2008. “This is a broken agency,” said Sen. Clarence Lam, D-Anne Arundel and Howard counties. “Some core functions and systems aren’t functioning properly and haven’t been in place for years.” Children in Unsafe Homes Among the most alarming findings, auditors discovered seven registered sex offenders living in homes that had been approved for guardianship, with ten foster children residing in those environments. In another case, a sex offender employed at a group home was later charged with new crimes against children, and one vendor supervising foster children in hotels employed a man convicted of murder in 1990. “These are children who are under […]
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