For Annette Smith, one final indignity remained for her client, a 17-year-old foster youth in Eugene, Oregon, who died by suicide last year: At the funeral home viewing, he was clad in a hospital gown.

“He was failed even in the end,” said Smith, a public defender. “It’s so easy for these kids to be unseen and unheard.”

Having been in foster care for all but about two years of his life, Jacob Doriety had shuttled through more than 50 placements, a hospitalization after a previous suicide attempt, and, finally, a hotel room.

Despite no one believing that hotels provide the kind of safe and supportive setting for foster youth with mental health issues, across the country, they continue to be sent there — as was Kanaiyah Ward, a 16-year-old girl who died of an intentional overdose of a c

See Full Page