Foster Care System – Minnesota

Feds punish state for failing foster care standards, By Brandon Stahl, July 10, 2015, Star Tribune: “More than 200 children have gone through Kate and Tyree Walton’s foster home in Brooklyn Park in the past four years, but for them one child stands out. The girl was 5 in 2012, when the Waltons took her in. Over the next three years, the Waltons watched the girl treated like a yo-yo. Child protection workers sent the girl back to her drug-addicted father, only to pull her from the home and bring her back to the Waltons.  Each time they’ve had her, the girl ‘is more withdrawn,’ Kate Walton said. ‘She’s older, understands what’s going on, and she’s angry.’  What happened to the girl, considered foster care ‘re-entry,’ has happened to more than 8,000 Minnesota children since 2007. That’s too many for the federal Children’s Bureau. Last month, the agency told the state that it was withholding more than $755,000 in child protection funding because Minnesota’s re-entry rates are too high…”