The Next CPS Task Force Meeting

The next meeting of the Governor’s Task Force on the Protection of Children is Friday, December 12, from 9 AM to 12 PM, in Room 200 of the State Office Building in St. Paul. While the agenda for this meeting has not been made available online yet, it is likely that this meeting will go over the workgroup recommendations for the full CPS Task Force’s report to the legislature on its preliminary recommendations; this report is due December 31, 2014.

Minnesota’s Child Welfare Report 2013

Attached in the most recent email from the CPS Task Force was Minnesota’s Child Welfare Report 2013: Report to the 2014 Minnesota Legislature, which was released in October 2014. This report was discussed at last week’s full CPS Task Force meeting. Some of the highlights of this report, as well as comparisons with the 2012 report, are below.

Statutory reference: Minnesota Statute 257.0725 requires the Department of Human Services to make available annually a report on child maltreatment and children in out-of-home placement.

Federal Safety & Permanency Measures

In terms of Federal Safety & Permanency Measures, Minnesota did better than the national standard for:

  • absence of repeat maltreatment (97.2% vs. 94.6%)
  • absence of maltreatment in foster care (99.8% vs. 99.68%)
  • time to reunification (within 12 months) (86.7% vs. 75.2%)
  • median months to reunification (4.9 months vs. 5.4 months)
  • reunification within 12 months after first removal (55.7% vs. 48.4%)
  • adoption in less than 24 months for those who had adoption as permanency plan (54.7% vs. 36.6%)
  • median months to adoption (22.7 months vs. 27.3 months)
  • permanency for children legally free for adoption prior to 18th birthday (98.0% vs. 98.0%)
  • children who were in care for three years or longer (aging out) (30.5% vs. 37.5%)

The areas in which Minnesota needs to improve (according to the report) are:

  • placement re-entry (25.7% vs. 9.9%)
  • discharges to adoption for children in care for 17+ continuous months (20.7% vs. 22.7%)
  • children in care for 17+ months who became legally free for adoption during the first 6 months of 2013 (3.0% vs. 10.9%)
  • children adopted in less than 12 months once legally free for adoption (49.8% vs. 53.7%)
  • permanency for children in care for 24+ months (19.2% vs. 29.1%)
  • placement stability for children in care for less than 12 months (85.8% vs. 86.0%) and for children in care for more than 12 but less than 24 months (60.7% vs. 65.4%) and for children in care 24+ months (33.5% vs. 41.8%)

Key Findings

These key findings are taken from the three different sections—Child Maltreatment, Children in Out-of-Home Care, and Adoption. Comparisons with 2012 and 2011 are also provided in some instances.

Section I—Child Maltreatment

In 2013, 19,602 reports of maltreatment involving 25,297 unique children were accepted and responded to, with 14,177 (72%) receiving a Family Assessment (FA) response. In 2012, there were just over 1300 fewer reports assessed, but over 500 more unique children involved. More reports in 2013 were assigned to FA (nearly 1200 more). Both the 2013 and 2012 reports cited neglect as the most common allegation of maltreatment in both FA (64%) and Family Investigation (FI; 54%). For the 5,083 accepted reports assigned to FI in 2013, maltreatment was substantiated in 2,767 (54%). In 48% of FI cases and 16% of FA cases, a need for ongoing child protective services was identified, and in 13% of FA cases, ongoing child protective services were offered to families.

In both 2013 and 2012, American Indian children were 6 times more likely to be a child subject of a report than White children, and African American/Black children three times more likely. This statistic is similar to 2011, which stated that they were “more than six and three times more likely.”

Section II—Children in Out-of-Home Care

In 2013, there were 11,510 children who spent some time in out-of-home care (up by 57 children from 2012, which reported 11,453 children). While this statistic is also up from 2011, the report indicates that this number has actually decreased 20% since 2004. Ten percent were adopted from out-of-home care (up from 9% in 2012). Just less than half (49%) of children in out-of-home care were age 12 and older.

Racial disparities persisted in this area: “American Indian, African American/Black, and children of two or more races are respectively 15.5, 4.0 and 4.0 times more likely than a White child to be placed out-of-home.” In 2012 the respective statistics were 14.3, 4.4, and 3.6 times more likely, meaning that disparities for American Indian children and Multiracial children increased in 2013 in this area while there was a slight reduction in disparities for African American/Black children.

Section III—Adoption

685 children became state wards in 2013 as a result of a termination of parental rights, and 539 state wards were adopted from foster care, the majority of whom were under age 12 (87%). In addition, African American/Black and American Indian children were, respectively, 3.0 and 3.2 times more likely to enter state guardianship than White children. The statistic concerning American Indian children is considerably lower than it was for 2012 (4.6 times more likely), while the statistic for African American/Black children is nearly identical (3.1 times more likely).