Yesterday morning, after a 3-year-old boy was found wandering by himself in Battery Park City's Teardrop Park, the police scrambled to find a relative, distributing his photograph to the media, because the boy couldn't tell the police his name or any identifying information. Now, the boy's been identified... and his mother is in a hospital. more ›

The Queens woman who crashed a van full of foster children while she was drunk and high on crack and heroin was sentenced yesterday. Two children in the van were killed in the 2009 crash and are gone forever, but driver Sheila Bethea, 46, could continue get out of prison in as few as 2 1/3 years. At her sentencing yesterday, the devastated mother of one of the little girls tore into Bethea with righteous anguish. more ›

Little Flower Children and Family Services—a foster care agency serving the city and Long Island since 1927—is suing the city for rejecting their contract under a new award process. The agency claims moving over 1,400 children to new agencies is a difficult and traumatizing process, and could delay adoptions by up to 2.6 years. However, Mayor Bloomberg told the Post that Little Flower just wasn't run well. "When we have services that don't work we're going to move monies from those services or those organizations that either aren't patronized or aren't used well or aren't doing a good job, and we'll go to those that do." And he wonders why reporters think his English isn't good enough. more ›

The NY Times reports that Mayor Bloomberg's big budget cuts will severely effect an Administration for Children's Services program focused on preventing abuse and helping families in trouble. Bloomberg wants to cut $12 million "and because the state matches city money for the agency, by nearly 2 to 1, the total reduction would amount to more than $35 million." more ›

More than a month after 7-year-old Patrick Alford disappeared from a Brooklyn foster home, police are running out of leads to follow. Originally they suspected the birth mom, but she’s been cleared since passing a lie detector test. The foster parents were a dead end too, as were canvases of the area and thousands of interviews. Even a $12,000 has failed to turn up the lost boy, leaving investigators and relatives to fear the worst. "The boy's not here - he's not here!" yelled Alford’s aunt, who’s been visited by detectives nine times. "I wish he was." more ›

Delaware police have tentatively ID'd a little girl found Sunday in a men's bathroom stall at a Shell station in Delaware. They believe she's about 2 years old and that she comes from New York or New Jersey, but haven't released other details. According to the Daily News, the child's hair was "pulled up on top of her head, and she was wearing a puffy tan winter coat over a purple shirt with small flowers printed on it. She also was wearing blue jeans with pink, white and purple sneakers with purple laces and white ankle socks." The AP says she's been placed in foster care family while police search for her family. more ›

The mother of a 7-year-old who disappeared from a foster home in Brooklyn more than a week ago remains behind bars because authorities believe she knows where her son is. Staten Island resident Jennifer Rodriguez—who according to the Post was described by a social worker yesterday as a drug-addicted habitual liar—is being held on contempt charges as authorities continue to look her son, Patrick Alford, who went missing on Jan. 22. more ›

Investigators have been searching for 7-year-old Patrick Alford since he vanished from foster care in East New York last Friday, and they think his mother knows where he is. So a judge ordered that 23-year-old Jennifer Rodriguez be detained at Rikers Island on contempt charges until the boy turns up. "I have the authority to hold her pending compliance with the court's order," said Staten Island Family Court Judge Terrence McElrath. "Did she comply with order to produce the child? No." more ›

A Queens mother is suing the city because her daughter was killed by a drug-addled driver when she was supposed to be in foster care. Algerlin Willis announced on Wednesday that she intends to file a $10 million suit against the Administration for Children's Services and Little Flower Children's Services of New York for the October death of her 15-year-old daughter, Katherine, who perished when a woman who had smoked crack, used heroin, and drank alcohol earlier in the day drove a van full of foster children into oncoming traffic. more ›

The Queens woman who steered a van full of foster children into oncoming traffic Monday night had alcohol in her system and a crack pipe in her... possession, investigators say. The horrific crash claimed the lives of two of the five children in the van, but driver Sheila Bethea, 45, survived. Yesterday prosecutors charged her with manslaughter, assault, and endangering the welfare of a child. One witness tells the Times the crash "sounded like a truck hit a building." more ›

Two girls have died from a horrible van crash in St. Albans, Queens that occurred at 5 p.m. yesterday. Both were foster children: The first, a 15-year-old, died late Monday night, and the other, a 5-year-old died at 4:30 this morning. The Daily News reports that driver Shelia Bethea, 45, "crossed the double-yellow line on Dunkirk St. in Saint Albans while going between 60 and 70 miles an hour, slamming her minivan into another van." more ›

A 54-year-old foster mother has been arrested and charged with criminally negligent homicide after she gave her six-year-old charge a prescription pain killer that killed her. more ›

The daughter of Daniel Malakov, the orthodontist who was killed on a playground by a gunman wielding a pistol with a homemade silencer, has been placed in foster care. The girl's physician mother and her family are suspects in the Queens-man's murder. Malakov was shot in front of his daughter in a Queens playground just six days after he'd gained legal custody of his daughter following a bitter custody dispute. A judge at the Queens... more ›