Maryland pushes to end warehousing foster children in hospitals, approves $1.2 billion in reforms after teen's death

Maryland's spending board approved contracts totaling more than $1 billion to provide new licensed caregivers for foster children as the state responds to the death in 2025 of a teenager who was being housed in a hotel. 

The interim secretary of Maryland's Department of Human Services (DHS) called the funding package "historic."

Right now, major pieces of legislation are moving through the General Assembly to prevent further tragedies. 

Kanaiyah's story 

At age 16, Kanaiyah Ward took her own life inside a Marriott hotel near the Johns Hopkins Hospital campus last year after state investigators found she was neglected by the caretaker who was supposed to supervise her with hourly checks.

Ward was living in the hotel because multiple foster facilities rejected her.

"The tragedy is that it's avoidable," said Delegate Mike Griffith, a Republican representing parts of Harford and Cecil Counties. "If Kanaiyah was put in a safe place with proper supervision and proper services, there's a very high likelihood she'd still be alive."

An audit released days beforehand revealed a lack of criminal background checks for one-on-one caregivers and children failing to receive basic education and medical care.    

Reforming the system

Shortly after Ward's death, the state stopped housing children in hotels. 

This week, Maryland's spending board approved more than $1.2 billion over the next five years to increase the number of licensed private providers, so children have a safe place to live. 

"For the first time, we will have very clear guidelines for who will be a provider for our children and how we expect them to behave," said Interim DHS Secretary Gloria Brown Burnett.

Burnett told Comptroller Brooke Lierman that DHS would never return to housing children in hotels. 

"The October 2025 directive prohibits our local offices from facilitating any stays in unlicensed settings, including hotels," the interim secretary said when asked about the issue.

The next step will be stopping overstays in hospitals after foster children have been medically discharged. 

Currently, eight children are living in hospitals, down from 20 in January 2025, according to documents provided to the spending board.

"I think you would agree that one case in a hospital overstay is still too many, right?" Lierman asked the interim secretary. "And I think some of the recent incidents that we've seen underscore how urgent this issue remains."

Lierman pushed to end hospital and hotel stays as a member of the General Assembly in 2020 and said it was disappointing that it had taken this long. 

The interim secretary would not, however, give an exact date for when the practice would officially end. 

"It would be irresponsible of me to stand here and give you a date," Burnett told Lierman. "What I can say is that today's contracts are an important step forward in expanding our capacity. Hospital overstays are a byproduct of not having enough resources, both in-state and as a last resort out-of-state—so these contracts, along with the work we continue to do to incentivize the types of places that we need for our children, move us much closer to ending hospital overstays."

The state also reports that in the past two years, more than 300 foster children have been placed with other relatives and taken out of contracted care, something they say is healthier for them. 

Speaking from experience 

Delegate Mike Griffith said he also wants to see hospital overstays stop for good.

The lawmaker spent his own teenage years in foster care in Maryland following the death of his grandmother when he was 12 years old. 

He later became a Marine and was elected in 2020.

"I understand feeling like a second-class citizen as being part of the system, and it's really a big honor to be part of the solution," Griffith told WJZ Investigates. 

He said the state must pass reforms and noted key legislation has bipartisan support. 

Griffith sponsored Kanaiyah's Law this session. 

It would restrict where the state can house children and strengthen oversight of Maryland's child welfare system.

"As a state, we spend a lot of money on things that can be debated whether it's our responsibility, but these children are wards of the state. They are actually our legal responsibility, and it's about time that we started to make some of these investments," Delegate Griffith said. "For the first time in a very long time, we have maybe the most robust package in our state's history."