Maryland adopts new rules after missing Baltimore boy’s case exposes gaps

A series of sweeping new Department of Human Services rules aim to better protect children under state supervision if they run away or go missing.

Maryland created a statewide youth services coordinator responsible for overseeing such cases — along with counterparts in each county — and strengthened communication with local law enforcement under a policy adopted in September.

These changes follow The Banner’s reporting on Tristan King, a 9-year-old boy from Baltimore who was considered missing for nearly six months after he jumped from his caseworker’s car the day he was set to enter foster care. The investigation outraged the public and exposed gaps in state policy that made it tougher for authorities to bring him to safety.

Gov. Wes Moore and Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott in March ordered a review of the agencies they oversee to determine how Tristan fell through the cracks and to see what procedures, if any, should be changed.

The state human services department’s new policy “takes important steps to prioritize the well-being of youth,” said Lilly Price, a spokesperson for the agency.

Rules on what to do if a child goes missing from state custody previously only applied to foster kids. But Tristan had not yet entered the system before he ran back to his great aunt Denise Day, who helped raise him in Baltimore’s Brooklyn neighborhood. The pair had been living together on the street after a July 2025 fire destroyed their home.

The new protections apply to children like Tristan, who was under a state worker’s supervision when he bolted.

Maryland should be commended for closing this gap in state policy, said Emily Putnam-Hornstein, a professor at the University of North Carolina’s School of Social Work.

“Clearly, there was a lack of clarity regarding what the proper response should have been” when Tristan ran away, said Putnam-Hornstein, who helps lead a national project focused on preventing child maltreatment fatalities. “The state failed him.”

Local departments of social services must now attempt to contact and locate children missing from state custody, care or supervision at least weekly until the child is found, under the new policy approved by Alger M. Studstill Jr., executive director of the Social Services Administration.

There are 52 such children missing today, said Price, the agency spokesperson. The new rules instruct staff to talk to the child’s close contacts, communicate with the child’s school, monitor the child’s social media accounts and attempt to reach the child directly by phone or by email.

They must also talk weekly with law enforcement and the child’s attorney, continually assessing whether media attention might help bring them to safety, according to the policy.

“I am pleased to see the state treating what happened to Tristan with appropriate alarm,” said Mitch Mirviss, an attorney who represents foster kids in a four-decade-old lawsuit against the state human services agency and the Baltimore City Department of Social Services. “This systemwide action eliminates any ambiguity about Maryland’s obligations going forward.”

Although Tristan’s caseworker called 911 and filed a missing person report when he ran away in September 2025, authorities’ efforts to find him after that were uneven.

The Banner reported earlier this week that Day helped hide Tristan to keep him out of foster care. She told reporters that at one point, authorities’ search for her grandnephew had become so passive that she thought her running and hiding had paid off.

Day said that officers who saw her in the neighborhood would ask how her nephew was doing, and she would usually reply with a smile and a thumbs-up. The missing-persons detectives looking for Tristan misunderstood a court order and closed his case for almost a month before they noticed their error.

At the same time, the child welfare workers assigned to Tristan were showing up in the neighborhood less often, interviews and records show.

Scott would later say everyone could have done their jobs better. The mayor’s office said in a statement that police had reviewed Tristan’s case and had also identified opportunities for improvement.

The new state policy requires additional steps if a child remains missing for more than 30 days. The local human services agency must gather staff, including the director, to talk about the case and brainstorm ideas to bring the child to safety. The group must also fill out a form documenting their search efforts.

Once a missing child is located, the policy directs staff to visit him or her and discuss the circumstances of the child’s disappearance. If the child ran away, staff should ask what might deter them from doing so again.

After authorities found Tristan with Day in a South Baltimore rowhome on March 13, they took him to a hospital for evaluation and placed him in a therapeutic foster home in Prince George’s County.

Child privacy laws prevent officials from sharing information about Tristan, but a picture posted on Facebook in September by his mother, who was absent for most of his life, shows the now-10-year-old healthy and smiling. She wrote that she was working toward reunification.