Child Welfare System – Minnesota

Posted on February 23, 2012 by townsend

• Audit: Child-welfare checks uneven in Minnesota, By Jeremy Olson, February 21, 2012, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: “Minnesota’s child welfare system needs stronger guidance to ensure that vulnerable children are treated consistently from one county to another, a legislative audit concluded Tuesday. Testing county and tribal child-welfare agencies with 10 fictional cases of abuse and neglect, state auditors found wide variations in whether local officials deemed investigations necessary. It was a virtual 50-50 split, for example, on whether agencies would investigate a claim of a small child found wandering a block from home. And 64 percent said they wouldn’t investigate as maltreatment a domestic abuse incident that occurred while a child was in another room. Despite these so-called ‘gray area referrals,’ many of the state’s child-welfare intake workers made reasonable and thoughtful deliberations, said Carrie Meyerhoff, the lead author of the report for the Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor…”
• Report finds gaps in Minnesota child protection system, By Sasha Aslanian, February 22, 2012, Minnesota Public Radio: “The Legislative Auditor says there are gaps in Minnesota’s child protection system — variations in how counties and some Indian tribes first respond to cases of alleged mistreatment of children. The report was fueled by two concerns: That the child protection system is screening out too many cases; and there’s too much variation in how child protection laws are applied across different counties. However, the report found that overall, county and tribal agencies are doing an adequate job deciding whether to act on suspected cases of child abuse or neglect…”