“There is an urgency here,” Del. Joseline A. Peña-Melnyk told the work group at its monthly meeting. “It’s not an intellectual exercise.”

While the Workgroup on Pediatric Hospital Overstays and Unlicensed Settings was created by the General Assembly earlier this year, its mission took on even greater import after a 16-year-old foster girl, Kanaiyah Ward, who was being housed in an East Baltimore hotel, was found dead of suicide on Sept. 22.

The work group was supposed to have delivered a report and recommendations by Oct. 1, but the process of appointing and vetting its members took longer than expected, and it met for the first time on Oct. 2.

At its monthly meeting, held online on Monday, members discussed developing a preliminary report by mid-February to brief legislators, whose session is scheduled to run from Jan.14 to April 13. Their final report likely would not come together until the end of May.

“If there’s any way we could possibly expedite things, we absolutely will, because I think everyone here is committed to trying to get something done,” said work group member Erica LeMon, Maryland Legal Aid’s advocacy director for children’s rights.

Several members of the work group are child advocates who, for years, sought to improve the treatment of foster youth. The work group also includes representatives from hospitals, legal, medical social workers, and behavioral health groups, as well as Maryland agencies that address children and youth issues: the departments of Human Services — which, with local agencies, operates the foster system — Juvenile Services, and Health.

Amid the outcry over the death of Kanaiyah, the Department of Human Services said at the end of last month it would discontinue the use of hotels. It gave local social services agencies until Nov. 24 to find placements for the few remaining youth still staying in hotels.

Two state delegates spoke at the meeting: Peña-Melnyk, who represents Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties and was the lead sponsor of the House bill that created the workgroup, and Heather A. Bagnall, who represents Anne Arundel and also sponsored the bill.

Bagnall said the issue has been studied for years. “I don’t think we’re starting from square one,” she said. “There has been work that has been done.”

Group members cited multiple studies of the state’s foster system, which have noted that most of the youth ending up in unlicensed facilities are older and can have complex medical or behavioral health needs that make placement difficult.

“The trouble comes when a child is medically cleared, and there’s a recommendation for the next level care, but it’s either not available, or they’re waiting for a bed, or they’ve been rejected by every [residential treatment center],” said Jane Krienke of the Maryland Hospital Association.

Members, who have broken up into smaller subgroups assigned different areas of study, said they’ve already begun reviewing previous reports and drafting points of discussion for the larger body.

The work group meets next on Dec. 8.

Have a news tip? Contact Jean Marbella at jmarbella@baltsun.com, 410-332-6060 and on Bluesky as @jeanmarbella.bsky.social.

“After nearly three full years in office, we have little confidence that Secretary Lopez is the leadership solution to these serious and systemic problems,” House Minority Leader Jason Buckel said in a statement Wednesday.

López and DHS officials were called before a joint Maryland General Assembly committee on Wednesday after a critical audit of how they run the state’s foster care system, from conducting inadequate criminal background checks to housing youth in hotels and other unlicensed settings. The agency came under an even harsher spotlight on Sept. 22, five days after the audit was released, when a 16-year-old foster youth, Kanaiyah Ward, was found dead of a suicide in an East Baltimore hotel.

“Governor Moore should seriously consider a top-to-bottom overhaul of this department,” Buckel’s statement said. “The lives and well-being of Maryland’s foster children depend on it.”

Moore, when asked about the call for López’s termination at an event in Annapolis on Wednesday, cited “challenges” at DHS that were “inherited” by his administration.

“But the commitment that I have is that we are going to fix them in our time, that we’re not just going to kick the can down the road,” said Moore, a Democrat. “And so I’m confident and thankful for the work that Secretary Lopez has already done and will continue to do to make sure that we are fixing the Department of Human Services and making sure it’s serving the people of Maryland better.”

On Thursday, Moore’s spokesman, David Turner, reiterated that DHS problems predate the governor taking office and questioned why Republicans are only now making an issue of them.

“Seemingly, the House GOP just realized long-standing issues that existed prior to this administration taking office,” Turner said. “I think that speaks to the lack of diligent oversight they provided until they thought it might be a useful political football.

“After a decade of neglect, it takes dedicated time and effort to untangle the complex web of issues, he said. “We only wish they had been just as dedicated when it was the Governor of their own party.”

But Senator Justin Ready, the Republican whip, denied politics were behind the criticism of López.

“This is not a political issue. It’s not an ideological issue,” said Ready, who represents Carroll and Frederick counties. “Nobody wants to see a kid die, and no one wants to see this kind of mismanagement.”

Ready is a member of the House and Senate’s Joint Audit and Evaluation Committee, which on Wednesday heard from legislative auditors who stated that many of their findings have been reported in previous audits and remain unremedied.

López said the agency has been working to reduce staff vacancies and turnover, improve data collection and reporting and discontinue the practice of housing foster youth in hotels rather than a home or treatment facility. Last week, he issued a directive to local social services agencies saying they could no longer send youth to hotels, office buildings and other unlicensed settings. The directive gave local agencies until Nov. 24 to find better placements for the five remaining youth who were staying in hotels as of earlier this week.

An attorney who has sued the state to reform its foster system, as of this past weekend, youth were still in other unlicensed settings. Mitchell Y. Mirviss, a Venable law firm partner, said he received reports that five Baltimore children were in hospital “overstays,” in which they remain despite being deemed ready for release on Friday. One child spent Sunday night and Monday morning at a city social services office.

Committee members said Thursday that while the three-hour hearing provided some necessary responses to the critical report, DHS and López still have more work to do.

Ready said he was glad to get some answers at the hearing, but remains “perplexed by how we ended up in this situation.

“Where is the accountability?” he said. “I’d love to see some changes at some level,” he said. “There needs to be a clear statement that this is not acceptable.”

Senator Shelly Hettleman, the Senate chair of the joint committee, said lawmakers will “revisit” the issues raised in the audit during the legislative session, particularly during the budgeting process when López makes the case for his department’s funding.

“The hearing brought to light the most alarming and most important parts of the audit that require a lot of follow-up,” the Baltimore County Democrat said. “The secretary came in with plans and commitments, and now [we] have to make sure we hold him accountable.”

Hettleman said she wants to make sure DHS delivers on its promise to provide more services in communities where youth can be placed, rather than ending up in hotels, offices and hospitals.

“I think we have to hold their feet to the fire to do that,” she said.

Have a news tip? Contact Jean Marbella at jmarbella@baltsun.com, 410-332-6060, or @jeanmarbella.bsky.social.

“Somebody’s dead over this,” said Del. Steven J. Arentz, an Eastern Shore Republican. “It troubles me, as a delegate, as a father, as a parent, that we’re here.”

Maryland Human Services Secretary Rafael J. López and other officials were called to answer for a scathing state audit that faulted the agency for problems that ranged from inadequate background checks to housing foster children in inappropriate settings. The audit was released Sept. 17, five days before a 16-year-old girl in foster care, Kanaiyah Ward, was found dead in a hotel in East Baltimore.

“My heart is broken over this death, and I ask myself every single day, if we had moved differently and faster on any number of issues, would this precious life still be alive?” López said during an emotional moment of the three-hour hearing.

Lawmakers and auditors expressed impatience at times: They cited the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on technology to better track the youth in state custody. They noted previous reports that documented some of the same problems at DHS year after year and remain unrepaired today.

“And we’re still here today, and they have the distinction of [having] a third unsatisfactory audit report in a row … In my 30 years, we have never had an agency go three audits in a row with an unsatisfactory,” said Brian S. Tanen, legislative auditor.

“I’m holding up an article that was published by The Baltimore Sun in October 2024. The headline was, ‘Housing Maryland foster children in hotels, unsafe situations for everyone,'” he said. “It’s nothing new. The challenge that we need to address today, hopefully at this hearing, is how can we effect change in a timely manner, in particular, when we’re dealing with situations that impact the most vulnerable people in our society?”

He and other auditors went through their list of findings, painting a picture of an agency with “a culture that is systemically broken,” as Del. Jared Solomon, a Montgomery County Democrat, characterized it. He is the House chair of the Joint Audit and Evaluation Committee that held the hearing.

The audit said DHS lacked comprehensive procedures to make sure that adults with criminal backgrounds don’t have contact with children in the system.

An employee at one of the 14 vendors used to provide one-on-one care to foster care youth in hotels had been convicted of murder in 1990, said Edward A. Rubenstein, a director at the Office of Legislative Audits. He said the Social Services Administration, a part of DHS, could not “readily determine” if that person had access to children.

The administration did not have a process to periodically match the sex offender registry to its records of providers and contractors, Rubenstein said. Auditors identified seven registered offenders with the same address as a guardianship home at which 10 children were placed as of August 2024, he said.

The audit also found that DHS did not ensure foster children were receiving required medical and dental exams and or conduct child abuse and neglect investigations in a timely manner. It noted that SSA placed foster children in unauthorized settings, among them, 280 youth who were staying in hotels under the supervision of unlicensed providers between 2023 and 2024.

The death of Kanaiyah, who had been enrolled at Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts, put a spotlight on how foster youth were ending up in hotels rather than with families or in treatment facilities. The medical examiner’s office determined the cause of the girl’s death was suicide after a note and an empty bottle of a common antihistamine were found with her at the Residence Inn by Marriott on North Wolfe Street on the Johns Hopkins medical campus.

Last year, a foster youth staying at a hotel in Owings Mills was accused of rape. This past legislative session, the General Assembly created a workgroup to study the issue of foster youth staying in hotels, hospitals and other unlicensed settings. After delays in getting members seated, it held its first meeting earlier this month.

DHS recently discontinued the practice of housing foster youth in hotels, although local agencies have until Nov. 24 to find alternative placements for the children still staying in one. At the hearing,  López said five foster youth remained in hotels and there were plans for each to exit them. In January 2023, when he began serving in the post, there were 41, he said.

López said his staff has worked to “course-correct and transform” the department, beset with long-standing problems that have led to several lawsuits against it, including one that dates back four decades.

“Let’s be real clear, we largely agree with the audits’ findings, and no matter where and how the problem started, we own our responsibility to deliver solutions,” he said.

Legislators pressed the agency officials for what it would take to remedy what Del. Jared Solomon, a Montgomery County Democrat and the House chair of the Joint

There has been a long-running problem of finding placements for foster youth with the most challenging emotional and medical needs.

“What are the needs coming out of the community, and do we have the ability to meet those needs?” asked Sen. Shelly Hettleman, a Baltimore County Democrat and the Senate chair of the Joint Audit and Evaluation Committee. She also asked why López’ recent directive against the use of hotels didn’t also mention cases where foster youth have ended up in homeless shelters or overstaying in hospitals after they’ve been deemed ready for release.

López said sometimes “really hard and often ugly decisions” have to be made when a vulnerable youth needs to be housed somewhere.

He also noted that his staff has made strides in improving staffing, data collection, analysis and housing foster youth with relatives or close family friends that will help keep them out of inappropriate settings.

“Again, not done,” López said, “but headed in the right direction.”

Have a news tip? Contact Jean Marbella at jmarbella@baltsun.com, 410-332-6060, or @jeanmarbella.bsky.social.

As of Monday, six youth remained in hotels, said Maryland Department of Human Services Secretary Rafael J. López. He has issued a directive to local social services agencies that they must place them elsewhere by Nov. 24.

“One young person in a hotel is one too many,” López told The Baltimore Sun. “We wanted to end the practice once and for all.”

The directive came in the wake of the suicide death of Kanaiyah Ward, 16, who was staying at the Residence Inn by Marriott on the Johns Hopkins medical campus on Wolfe Street under the care of a contracted “one-on-one” service provider. The medical examiner determined that the cause of death was diphenhydramine intoxication, saying an empty bottle of the antihistamine, often sold as Benadryl, and a suicide note were found on the premises. DHS continues to investigate the death.

It is not clear how long Kanaiyah had been staying at the hotel, but the girl, who previously lived with her family in Prince George’s County, had been enrolled at the Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts in West Baltimore since last September 2024, according to the city public schools system.

“Hotels, motels, office buildings and other licensed settings are not in a youth’s best interest and must be discontinued immediately,” López’s directive said. “Youth experiencing stays in unlicensed settings is inconsistent with state and federal law, and departmental standards and policies.

DHS said it has been increasing residential care services to accommodate youth who might previously have ended up in hotels and other places not licensed to provide foster care.

Child advocates say foster youth are still staying, for example, in social services offices and hospitals.

Mitchell Y. Mirviss, a Venable law firm partner who for decades has sued the state to reform its foster system, said he received reports that five Baltimore children were in hospital “overstays,” in which they remain despite being deemed ready for release on Friday, and one child spent Sunday night and Monday morning at a city social services office.

López said children will be brought to offices on occasion, for just several or more hours, if, for example, they are removed from their homes in the middle of the night and cannot immediately be placed in a home or other facility.

Advocates questioned where caseworkers will find placements for youth who have been in hotels due to a lack of open spots.

“It’s not a solution, it’s a command,” said Judith Schagrin, a former administrator of Baltimore County’s foster system. “It doesn’t appear to be accompanied by, ‘Here are the resources.'”

“Where are they going? said Leslie Seid Margolis, managing attorney for Disability Rights Maryland. “The bottom line is: There aren’t enough community resources for them.

The directive, for example, doesn’t specifically name children who overstay in hospitals, Margolis said. She and other attorneys have a pending lawsuit against the state on behalf of such foster youth, who can linger for months in a hospital setting awaiting a placement.

Rather than hotels, the DHS directive calls for youth to be placed, in the order of preference, in kinship care, a licensed foster home, a contracted treatment foster home, congregate care such as a group home, an independent living program, or a trial home visit with a parent or guardian.

López said child welfare is “a very complex environment,” and social services agencies are continuing to work to provide “a higher level of care” across the state.

“If I had a wand, I would have used the magic wand from day one,” he said.

Maryland Delegate Mike Griffiths, a Republican who represents Harford and Cecil counties, said that he welcomes the directive as “obviously a positive step forward.”

But he also said he wants more details on where youth are being sent, and said that he still plans to introduce a bill, “Kanaiyah’s law,” to codify the ban on using hotels as well as other unlicensed settings. The bill would also address issues of licensing and background checks, Griffiths said.

The issue is personal for him, having been in foster care himself between the ages of 12 and 18.

“It brings back tough memories for me,” Griffiths said. “Watching this play out, these kids are still largely treated like second-class citizens.”

To help reduce reliance on hotels, DHS said it has contracted with residential child care providers to expand and develop services to address the complex needs that have made placements difficult.

In June 2025, DHS put out a solicitation for residential programs that can accommodate “children with complex medical and behavioral health needs” in “a structured, therapeutic, and supportive environment.”

Existing group homes, DHS said, don’t necessarily have the specialized staff or training for this level of care, leading to youth overstaying at hospitals or being placed in hotels.

DHS has said reducing hotel stays has been “a top priority.” There had been 41 youth staying in hotels in January 2023 when the current administration took office. As of last week, there were 3,748 youth in foster care in Maryland.

Officials have said that hotels have been used as a last resort for youth, usually older ones with behavioral or mental health issues that can make them more difficult to place. There may not be a foster family willing or able to take a youth with behavioral problems, or a treatment facility with an opening.

A hotel is not a home: Maryland, other states seek a better place for foster youth

While intended as a stopgap measure, hotel stays could drag on for much longer.

According to a July report by a court-appointed monitor of the Baltimore foster care system, for example, “The last youth to be placed at a hotel in Baltimore City was moved to a group home on May 9, 2025, after living in a hotel since January 8, 2024, more than one year and 4 months.”

The monitor’s report, though, goes on to note that removing youth from hotels doesn’t always solve the problem for good:  “Unfortunately, several of the youth who previously resided in hotels have been ejected (some more than once) from their post-hotel placements, are on runaway, or have spent nights” in an agency office.

The General Assembly created a workgroup that recently began meeting to study and make recommendations on how to solve the problem of foster youth staying in hotels and other unlicensed settings.

López said his directive is part of an ongoing set of efforts to better care for youth with complex needs.

“Can we continue to improve?” he said. “Without question.”

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“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 common antihistamine in a Residence Inn in Baltimore on Sept. 22.

“It’s a systemic problem. It’s a systemic failure,” said Robert Basler, an associate vice-president of Arrow Child & Family Ministries, which provides foster care services in Maryland and Texas. “You don’t have enough resources. There are not enough, or we wouldn’t be in this place.”

‘Not willing to let it go’

The practice of using hotels, once sporadic, grew more common around 10 years ago and surged during the COVID pandemic when fewer foster homes were willing to take in youth and residential treatment facilities restricted admissions.

Whether in the wake of tragic events or to settle lawsuits that advocates have filed against child welfare agencies, Maryland and other states have been working to reduce the use of hotels and address what they say is their root cause — the lack of sufficient placements for youth with the most challenging needs.

Basler is a member of a workgroup created by the Maryland General Assembly and charged with studying the issue of youth staying in hotels, hospitals and even social service agency buildings rather than in a foster home or treatment facility. The group’s work had been delayed by the amount of time it took to vet and seat its members, and they met for the first time on Oct. 2, a day after its final report and recommendations were initially due.

As Kanaiyah’s death casts even more urgency on their work, the workgroup — which includes advocates, treatment providers and representatives of state agencies and medical and social worker associations — hopes to complete an interim report by March and a final one by April, said Ted Gallo, executive director of the Maryland State Council on Child Abuse and Neglect, an advisory body.

“We need to remain invested long-term,” Gallo said. “We’ve got a dedicated group that’s very familiar with this problem, and they’re not willing to let it go.”

The group will be looking at current resources available in the state as well as what other states are doing, he said.

‘Less bad than hotels’

And indeed, multiple states have wrestled with the issue.

In Washington state, two short-term homes, with three or four bedrooms and supervised by child welfare staff, house teenagers who otherwise might be sent to hotels. The kids tend to like the homes, where they share meals and, unlike in other facilities, are allowed to use their cellphones, said Jenny Heddin, deputy secretary and chief of staff of Washington’s Department of Children, Youth & Families.

Still, she said they remain a temporary measure, “sort of a harm reduction approach,” until they can get the youth in a more permanent placement.

“They are less bad than hotels,” Heddin said, “but they’re still not great, right?”

The agency is undergoing reform as part of a 2022 settlement of a suit by advocates who alleged it had failed to provide safe and stable placements for foster youth. According to news reports, one child even spent the night in a car for lack of an appropriate placement.

Jean Strout, senior attorney with the National Center for Youth Law, one of the groups that sued the department, said even before the settlement, the judge in the case ordered the agency to stop housing children in offices, hotels and other unlicensed settings.

“It was not a big battle,” she said. “Where things get more nuanced is, what do you do instead?”

She said she hopes the focus can shift to providing more individualized solutions for the hard-to-place youth and addressing the underlying issues with their families that led to them being removed in the first place.

“You can’t just keep growing the foster system and trying to find more foster families,” Strout said.

Traumatized children

She and other advocates say states need to look at more creative ways of caring for the kinds of youth who tend to end up in hotels — they are generally older, for example, and have physical and mental health needs beyond what a typical foster home can provide.

A child welfare research group, Chapin Hall, which has studied Maryland’s foster care system, said a sampling of the youth who stayed in hotels, offices or hospitals found that all of them had attention deficit or impulse control problems. Nearly all suffered from depression or a mood disorder, and almost 60% of them were deemed at risk of suicide, the researchers found.

“We’re dealing with traumatized children who are acting like traumatized children,” Gallo said.

The Chapin Hall report is just one of many to document failings of the child welfare system, but also the heartbreaking level of needs it faced.

“[The child] was shot … and is paralyzed from his waist down,” a case reviewer wrote of one youth, going on to note that his “mother is deceased, and his father is incarcerated.”

Such needs are beyond what the foster system was initially designed to handle, said Richard P. Barth, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Social Work.

“The child welfare system is for protecting children from their parents,” said Barth, who has published widely on foster care. “What happened in many cases was the mental health system let these kids float over to the child welfare system.”

Barth said the trend away from group facilities in favor of a home setting doesn’t work for all foster youth who need more than a bed to sleep in.

“Kids get hospitalized, birth or foster parents don’t want to pick them up because they’re concerned about their safety, so the child welfare system ends up overseeing these cases and trying to find homes for them,” he said. “That’s why we end up with hotels.”

A ‘constellation’ of kids

The search for placements for high-need foster youth has led some states to try a model pioneered by the Mockingbird Society in Washington State, in which foster homes are clustered together in a “constellation.” They support one another, particularly in caring for youth with behavioral health needs. The homes are grouped around a “hub” home, typically an experienced foster care provider that the other families can turn to, especially if they need respite, and they gather frequently.

KVC Kansas, a behavioral health care system, launched two constellations, each with a capacity of 10 homes, to fill a gaping need for foster homes that could provide higher-level, therapeutic care.

“We had a lot of homes that were on the cusp of being able to provide higher care,” said Angela Hedrick, KVC Kansas vice president. “We felt that if they had that additional network of support amongst other foster families, who know what it’s like to do that, they might be able to take that extra step and provide that care.”

Hedrick said the networks have worked so well, KVC hopes to add additional ones. According to the Mockingbird Society, a 25-year-old advocacy organization, five child welfare agencies operate in the U.S. with constellations, and the concept has proved particularly popular abroad, with networks operating in countries including the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan.

Those who work in child welfare say the village concept is an apt one when it comes to the needs of foster children.

“We can’t do this by ourselves,” Heddin said. “We really require other state agencies and systems to step up. So if a young person needs drug treatment…. or if they need residential care of some kind, they should be able to get that.”

If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

Have a news tip? Contact Jean Marbella at jmarbella@baltsun.com, 410-332-6060, or @jeanmarbella.bsky.social.

Baltimore Police responding to a report of an overdose discovered Kanaiyah’s body Sept. 22 at the Residence Inn by Marriott on North Wolfe Street at the Johns Hopkins medical campus.

According to the autopsy report obtained by The Baltimore Sun, “a detailed note” and an empty bottle of an antihistamine available over-the-counter were discovered at the scene. The death was a suicide and caused by diphenhydramine intoxication, according to the report by Dr. Joseph Mininni, assistant medical examiner.

The report also said Kanaiyah had “a clinical history of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and prior suicide attempt,” according to her medical records, and multiple scars from previous self-cutting wounds, the report said.

Child advocates Wednesday questioned why a girl with documented mental health issues was placed in a hotel, with a caregiver under contract with the state, rather than a setting more suitable for her needs.

“Children and youth with a diagnosed disability that puts them at risk of harm should absolutely not be placed in a hotel where they will not have access to the structure and clinical support they need,” Leslie Seid Margolis, managing attorney of Disability Rights Maryland, said in an email.

Margolis, who has sued state officials on behalf of foster children, is among those who have criticized the Department of Human Services for using hotels for any youth. DHS officials have said they’ve worked to reduce the number of children housed in hotels, to 18 as of last month from 59 two years ago.

“We are committed to ending hotel stays in Maryland for all youth in our care,” said Lilly Price, a DHS spokeswoman.

She said the department “whenever possible” works to keep the state’s roughly 3,700 foster youth or within their own communities, “including kin by choice or by blood.”

Kanaiyah’s death has renewed advocates’ calls for the state, as Judith Schagrin put it, “to do better.”

“What this tells me is our child-serving systems are failing our children,” said Schagrin, an advocate who previously headed Baltimore County’s foster care system. “It sounds like she had severe depression. It tells me that there were no other placements for her or she wouldn’t have been there.

“This highlights the holes in our child-serving system,” she said.

Calling the circumstances of Kanaiyah’s death “deeply, deeply saddening,” an attorney for the girl’s family said the autopsy report raises even more questions for him.

“What steps were being taken given that Kanaiyah was high-risk?” Thomas Doyle said. “The one-on-one care, what did that entail?”

Maryland lawmakers push for hearings, oversight on hoteling foster children

Doyle said Kanaiyah had been in foster care for about two years and previously lived in several group homes before being placed in the hotel with a contracted caregiver. He said she had been taking medication for mental health conditions.

Kanaiyah, who had previously lived with her mother and grandparents in Prince George’s County, had been attending Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts in West Baltimore.

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The cause of death of Kanaiyah Ward is diphenhydramine intoxication, said Stephanie Moore, special assistant to the medical examiner. The drug, the active ingredient in Benadryl, is an antihistamine available over the counter used to treat allergies.

Baltimore police found the girl’s body Sept. 22 at the Residence Inn by Marriott at the Johns Hopkins medical campus on Wolfe Street, while responding to a call about an overdose at the hotel. In what has been a controversial practice, Kanaiyah was staying in the hotel with a caregiver under contract to the state Department of Human Services, which runs the foster care system.

The girl’s mother, Brooke Ward, referred a call Tuesday from The Baltimore Sun to her attorney, Thomas Doyle. He said he had not known that the medical examiner had determined the cause of death.

“There still [are] a lot of questions: Where was the supervision? What were the circumstances?” Doyle said. “Why was she in this hotel? Why was she not in a better facility?”

Given that the medical examiner has ruled the death a suicide, the police department has closed its investigation, spokeswoman Lindsey Eldridge said.

In a statement Tuesday, DHS spokesperson Lilly Price said the department “whenever possible” seeks “to keep youth with their family and in their community, including kin by choice or by blood.”

Price said “targeted actions” — including new policies, residential resources and the expansion of care services — led to a reduction in the number of children placed in hotel settings, to 18 as of Sept. 25, 2025, from 59 two years earlier. There are 3,765 youth in out-of-home care in total in Maryland.

“This marks a significant improvement driven by laser-focused efforts over the past two years,” Price said.

She added that the department is investigating the incident.

“We are committed to transparency and being as open as possible while maintaining the confidentiality of children and their families, as protected by law,” Price said.

Doyle said Kanaiyah had been in foster care for about two years, and had been placed in group homes before being sent to stay in the hotel with a contracted caregiver known as a “one-on-one.” Doyle said the girl was on medication for mental health issues.

“Mom was trying to get her in a group home,” Doyle said. “She wasn’t getting any treatment except for some medication.”

Kanaiyah had attended Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts since September 2024, according to Baltimore City Public Schools. Before entering foster care, Kanaiyah lived with her mother and grandparents in Prince George’s County, Doyle said.

DHS has been under fire for its supervision of the state’s more than 3,000 foster children, who have been removed from their homes often for abuse or neglect. While they optimally are placed in family settings, some have ended up staying in hotels, hospitals or even social service agency buildings.

Last year, a foster youth was accused of rape at an Owings Mills hotel where he had been staying with a one-on-one.

In September, a scathing audit by the state’s Office of Legislative Services found the department had failed to properly vet its vendors and service providers, resulting in sex offenders having access to children. It also said 280 foster children had been placed in hotels under the supervision of unlicensed providers between 2023 and 2024.

“I think the audit is about as damning as any can get,” Doyle said.

The Towson-based Fenwick Behavioral Services was the contractor for Kanaiyah’s care. Its CEO, Eric Fenwick, declined to comment but sent a statement via a communications firm.

“For over eight years, Fenwick Behavioral Services has been dedicated to providing compassionate support services to young people in Maryland’s foster care system,” the emailed statement said. “Our commitment and standards are at the highest level because of what our young people deserve.

“We at Fenwick Behavioral Services are devastated by this loss,” the statement said. “The privacy rights of our clients and families must be honored and therefore, we cannot comment further, except to say that we join everyone in mourning the tragic loss of this child.”

An overdose or intoxication of the drug “can be either accidental or intentional,” according to a paper, “Diphenhydramine Toxicity,” on the National Institutes of Health’s website.

“While intentional diphenhydramine overdose/intoxication can be observed in individuals attempting self-harm/suicide, there is documentation of individuals utilizing diphenhydramine to produce pleasant and euphoric effects,” the authors wrote.

The medical examiner’s office referred questions about its ruling to the autopsy report, which could not be obtained by late afternoon.

Have a news tip? Contact Jean Marbella at jmarbella@baltsun.com, 410-332-6060, or @jeanmarbella.bsky.social.

Feeling “really alone and disconnected” in her dorm room, she reached out to an instructor with the Flexus program within the University of Maryland, College Park’s Clark School of Engineering, where female students live and learn together.

The instructor connected Hernández to another student feeling similarly isolated, and she made it over those difficult days to thrive at the school, ultimately mentoring other students, joining groups like Women in Engineering and winning the Clark school’s student service award when she graduated last year.

“There was a really good support group,” Hernández said. “It would have been hard without it.”

Hernández, whose mother is also an engineer, now works as a structural engineer at Whitman, Requardt and Associates in Fells Point. She may well have succeeded even without the boost from Flexus and other programs. But increasingly, those in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and math are seeking ways to support women as a way of addressing a chronic retention problem: Compared with other professions, women tend to drop out of STEM at a higher rate than in other fields, whether it’s during college or in the workforce.

Fewer female than male college students major in STEM to begin with, and they’re less likely to stick with it, get a first job in the field or remain there as long, according to multiple studies, including one with the spot-on title of “Bye Bye Ms. American Sci: Women and the Leaky STEM Pipeline.”

The reasons range widely, experts say, from women facing the lingering, ages-old stereotype that boys are better at math and science, to the women lacking role models both in their college faculties and the leadership ranks of workplaces, to the difficulty of carving out time to have children and maintain a work-life balance.

“The culture of STEM was designed historically for men with a wife at home,” said Phyllis Robinson, a biology professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “It’s a rough-and-tumble enterprise. The practice of science is pretty time-consuming, and it’s pretty gendered.”

Still, Robinson, who created the UMBC faculty group WISE, for Women in Science and Engineering, there’s been “a huge change in the environment for STEM women” over the years.

There are differences within the fields — Robinson said her own is considered the “kindest,” and indeed more women than men earn undergraduate biology degrees. But moving up in the postgraduate ranks, they again increasingly lose their share: They constitute less than a third of tenure-track professors in the life sciences and just over a fourth of the full professor positions.

Other STEM fields, such as computer science, have even fewer women, with just over 20% of undergraduate degrees going to them.

“It can be very isolating,” said Carolyn Seaman, a professor of information systems and director of the Center for Women in Technology at UMBC. “In classes, you’re not seeing anyone who looks like you.”

CWiT, as it is known, offers what’s jokingly known as a “concierge service” to support undergrads in computing and engineering with scholarships, community building events and peer, faculty and industry mentoring — all of which have been found to help with retention.

“Female students are socialized early on that tech is not for them,” Seaman said. “When it becomes hard — it’s hard for everyone, this is hard stuff — if you don’t have that support structure, you are still getting the message that you don’t belong here. The impostor syndrome is huge.”

At College Park, programs like Flexus seek to provide that kind of support structure. (There’s also a program for male students called Virtus.)

“It extends beyond the classroom, said Jen Kuntz, assistant director of the Women in Engineering at the Clark engineering school. “We provide our students with academic but also a social experience, and that’s been shown to help with retention.”

Research has also shown that women are more likely to stay in STEM if they feel they’re working toward a shared purpose with their colleagues and that their work contributes to making a difference in people’s lives.

“It’s a socialization kind of thing. You’re raised to care for other people,” said Elyse Hill, an aerospace engineer at NASA who had received a CWiT scholarship to go to UMBC.

CWiT alums like Hill, a Waldorf native, said the community is tight, often living together on a designated floor in a dorm, and remaining so after graduation.

“We traveled in a pack,” she said, “whether it was doing homework together or just going to dinner.”

While she has had both male and female mentors, Hill said the latter offered an added perspective on the experience of being a woman in a “more impersonal” area like engineering.

Now, she tries to give back by serving as an industry mentor, speaking on panels and making herself available to students or those entering the workforce.

To better understand what would help keep more women in the field, Gili Freedman, an associate professor of psychology at St. Mary’s College, wanted to go straight to the source. Her study, “Dear future women of STEM: letters of advice from women of STEM,” published in 2023, is based on advice juniors and seniors majoring in the sciences were asked to give to their younger counterparts.

Among the main messages? “Everyone struggles,” Freedman said. “Failure doesn’t make you a failure.”

Freedman said women in the sciences face deeply entrenched stereotypes about brilliance. As early as the age of 6, girls are less likely than boys to say members of their own gender are “really, really smart” and start avoiding activities they associate with braininess.

“We associate STEM fields with brilliance,” Freedman said, “and society also associates men with brilliance.”

Carol Wong remembers being told by a classmate at UMCP, where she was in an honors program and received her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, that the professor liked her only because she was female.

“I didn’t fall for that,” said Wong, 39, who was in an honors program and went on to get a master’s at Stanford. “I understood the work. I asked questions in class.”

Wong, a senior water resources engineer for the Fulton-based nonprofit Center for Watershed Protection, said she’s seen the retention problem for women in STEM up close: About half her female engineering friends have left the field over the years.

But that’s not entirely negative, she said.

“People recruit engineers for nonengineering jobs. They like the way engineers think and process information,” Wong said.

Engineering tends to be less flexible than other jobs, which can be a factor when a woman decides to start a family, said Wong, who was born and raised in Howard County.

“Your projects are multiyear,” Wong said, making it harder to “take yourself out of the field. “There’s still a stigma when you have a gap in work.”

Although childless herself, she finds that the nonprofit sector can be more family-friendly and works with several women who are mothers and who continue to work, sometimes part time.

Julie J. Park, an education professor at UMCP who has studied how to retain women in STEM fields, said there remains a lack of “structural support for women who want to have families.”

“It’s one step forward, two steps back,” she said. “There’s greater awareness of the problem … but you’re fighting against these entrenched cultures.”

LaDawn Partlow grew up in Northeast Baltimore and “didn’t know anything out of Baltimore.” Luckily, it was enough — she graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and went on to get her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical and computer engineering at Morgan State University, where she is now director of academic engagement & outreach at its Cybersecurity Assurance & Policy Center. There, she leads programs to get middle school students and especially girls interested in STEM.

She might be her own best lesson for the students.

“With me having strong ties to the community, there is someone who looks like them and who did it,” Partlow said. “They feel heard. They feel seen.”

Have a news tip? Contact Jean Marbella at jmarbella@baltsun.com, 410-332-6060, or @jeanmarbella.bsky.social.

“Ice cream takes the temperature down,” its host Kaye Whitehead said Monday, when Taharka Brothers launched a new flavor in her honor. “It’s so stressful now.”

The ice cream is called “Dr. Kaye’s Taste of Freedom.”

Befitting a host who frequently dives into complicated issues of race and justice, the ice cream is multi-layered and intensely flavored: The first layer is dark cocoa ice cream with white chocolate chips, the second French vanilla, and the third Kenyan coffee with brownie pieces.

“It’s about digging through and bringing the community together,” Whitehead said. “It’s about finding the point where we can come together. We can come together over ice cream.”

The flavor was launched — with samples — at a live broadcast of Whitehead’s 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. show from the R. House food hall in Remington, which has a Taharka’s scoop shop. The ice cream will also be sold in pints nationwide, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit Whitehead’s Karson Institute for Race, Peace & Social Justice at Loyola University, where she is a professor of communication and African and African American studies.

“We want to introduce the nation to her flavor, pun intended,” said LaMarr Darnell Shields, a director at Taharka.

Shields said the company has honored other Baltimoreans similarly, from the late rapper Tupac Shakur (Keep Ya Head Up, vanilla with blackberry sauce and oatmeal crisp) to Gov. Wes Moore, whose “We Want Moore” ice cream features vanilla with chocolate fudge and peanut butter cookie swirl.

“This is how we shed light on the changemakers in our communities,” said Taharka co-owner Vinny Green. “We tell a lot of different stories, we do a lot of different flavors.”

Have a news tip? Contact Jean Marbella at jmarbella@baltsun.com, 410-332-6060, or @jeanmarbella.bsky.social.

Dufour is among those getting in under the wire on a federal tax credit on solar energy systems that was ended by the Trump administration. With the credit expiring on Dec. 31, consumers and solar companies are racing to get installations completed in the final months of the year to save 30% of the cost.

“It’s sort of like a mad rush, losing-my-mind busy,” said Gailan Wensil-Strow, a vice president of American Sentry Solar, which is installing Dufour’s system. “I’m working everyone as much as I can. I’m asking, ‘Who can work Saturday?'”

The clock is ticking for those who haven’t started the process of selecting an installation company, applying for local government permits and arranging with BGE to connect to the power grid. Some companies have stopped taking orders in jurisdictions where permitting may take too long to get the installation done in time.

“With the change in the federal policy, we’ve seen a surge in interest,” said Tim Lattimer, administrator of Howard County’s Office of Community Sustainability. “People don’t like to leave money on the table.”

The county partners with a solar co-op, Switch Together, that leverages bulk-purchasing capacity to negotiate lower prices. Nearly 300 residents have accepted estimates and put down deposits, county officials said, filling the calendars of the three designated installation companies through the end of the year.

With some variations, the federal credit has been available since 2005, most recently as part of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that extended it through 2032. But President Trump, a supporter of fossil fuel production, terminated the solar tax credit as part of his spending bill. Passed in July, the bill also ended, as of Sept. 30, a tax credit of up to $7,500 for buying electric vehicles.

Trump has mocked clean energy as the “Green New Scam,” and called wind and solar worthless when it’s dark, ignoring the existence of battery storage. Nonetheless, renewables are part of the U.S. energy portfolio, while fossil fuels still dominate. In the first half of 2025, fossil fuels produced 58% of the nation’s electricity, while solar accounted for 11.2%, wind 10.8% and nuclear 18%, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The solar credits have helped make the initial investment in a system more affordable, consumers and companies said.

“I need that third off,” said Dufour, 68, a retired electrical engineer and IT specialist.

She expects to get a $16,218 credit off the $54,060 cost of adding new panels and a storage battery to her 4-year-old solar system. She also is taking advantage of a $5,000 state grant for batteries.

Awaiting approval of her permit and expecting installation in November, Dufour said her expanded system will give her an 18-kilowatt capacity to fuel her all-electric ranch house. The battery will allow her to store energy, helpful during power outages when she would lose access to her well water.

“I’ll be independent,” she said. “I’ll be considered a small energy producer.”

She uses a phone app to monitor the amount of energy she produces and uses. Excess energy goes to BGE, she said, which then gives her a credit.

“I don’t really like fossil fuels,” Dufour said, despite hailing from Texas, where “oil is king. I’m a big advocate of solar.”

Another solar user, Alan Klein, 71, of Columbia, said his system makes both environmental and economic sense.

He said he’d been thinking “off and on” for years of going solar, but thought he’d have to chop down the mature trees that shade his home. But no trees were harmed in the project when it turned out panels could be installed on his detached garage’s roof.

With a tax credit of about $6,500, the cost of his system dropped to $15,500, he said, and the panels soon proved their value.

“My bills over the summer went from $200 to $35,” he said.

Factoring in the tax credit, the typical solar installation in Maryland begins to pay back in about six to eight years, said Sukrit Mishra, Switch Together’s program director for the capital region at its partner group, Solar United Neighbors, or SUN.

Switch Together works in 10 states, and is available in Howard, Montgomery and Frederick counties and the city of Bowie.

Solar companies say their business began picking up this summer with the news that the federal credit would be ending.

“For people who were dragging their feet for years … well, if they were going to do it, now’s the time,” said Zac Hare, vice president of residential sales for Lumina Solar.

His sales have soared as a result, to $64 million in the first nine months of this year, compared to $36 million during the same time period last year.

Hare and others expect a tapering off but not an abandonment of an energy system that no longer seems niche.

“I don’t think the market is over. I think it’s coming out of its infancy,” Wencil-Strow said. “Now it has to learn how to be a full industry without their parents supporting them.”

Kimberly Armstrong, co-founder of Baltimore Green Justice Workers Cooperative, said the tax credits “absolutely” helped homeowners who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford a solar system.

“You have a lot of people that want to participate but they couldn’t because it was not affordable or it was not accessible,” said Armstrong, whose company, Urban Clean Energy Advisors, offers energy consultation to help reach underserved communities.

Baltimore’s rowhouse-dominated landscape is not always as conducive to solar installation, she said, given that sloped rather than flat roofs are preferable. Additionally, some rowhouses may provide too small a job to attract some companies, she said.

“A lot of solar companies don’t want to work in Baltimore City because it’s not as profitable for them,” Armstrong said. “It’s only profitable if you have an entire block.”

Still, even in the city, this has been a boom year for solar. The city issued 403 permits for solar installations in the first nine months of this year, compared to 233 during the same time period last year. The number of permits has been trending upward since 2020, according to DHCD, when 100 were issued.

The city also is addressing what some companies said can be a lengthy permitting process and prioritizing solar applications, said Tammy Hawley, a spokeswoman for the department.

“Additional engineers have also been brought in to review plans and applications in order to keep up with demand,” she said.

Advocates say solar will continue to attract homeowners at a time when both energy costs and demands on the grid, particularly from data centers, are rising. Consumers who switch to solar ultimately help reduce that strain, said Robin Dutta, executive director of the trade group, Chesapeake Solar and Storage Association.

“With utility rates going up as they are — and not stopping soon — [going solar] is one of the things consumers can do,” he said. “And it’s not just helping the homeowner, it’s helping the grid as well.”

With the end of the federal credits, some are looking to local and state governments to help make up the difference, and help the state achieve what are some of the nation’s most ambitious climate goals.

Eric Coffman, division director of energy programs at the Maryland Energy Administration, said Maryland has a range of incentives and rebates, although some have income and other restrictions. Like the federal tax credits, they’ve proved popular with consumers, he said.

“We are seeing a very significant uptick in our programs and applications for funding,” he said. “We have a full array of programs that aren’t going away.”

Have a news tip? Contact Jean Marbella at jmarbella@baltsun.com, 410-332-6060, or @jeanmarbella.bsky.social.