The Department of Children and Families issued a report Friday saying the agency “made all reasonable efforts to locate” the biological parents of Carlita White after it was discovered her birth certificate was fraudulent and a paternity test the department administered revealed the woman who raised her was not her mother.

After finding no answers from DCF for five years after first suspecting foul play, White turned to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and found a baby photo of herself which led to her discovering she was kidnapped from a hospital in New York at three-weeks old.

“Workers were led to believe that her parents lived in New Haven. DCF staff and supervisors appropriately contacted and accessed the court system, local and federal agencies and other relevant State agencies in pursuit of [her] biological family in a timely way. The Special Review indicates that had staff suspected that [her] family resided in New York or any other location, they willingly would have expanded their search,” a summary of the DCF report reads. “DCF staff indicated that contact with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) is typically a function of law enforcement, once it is determined that contact is necessary.”

Jacqueline was CT Mirror’s Education and Housing Reporter, and an original member of the CT Mirror staff, joining shortly before our January 2010 launch. Her awards include the best-of-show Theodore A. Driscoll Investigative Award from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists in 2019 for reporting on inadequate inmate health care, first-place for investigative reporting from the New England Newspaper and Press Association in 2020 for reporting on housing segregation, and two first-place awards from the National Education Writers Association in 2012. She was selected for a prestigious, year-long Propublica Local Reporting Network grant in 2019, exploring a range of affordable and low-income housing issues. Before joining CT Mirror, Jacqueline was a reporter, online editor and website developer for The Washington Post Co.’s Maryland newspaper chains. Jacqueline received an undergraduate degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University and a master’s in public policy from Trinity College.

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