Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota Podcasts

Last month a Senior Fellow from the Child Welfare League of America, Paul DiLorenzo, wrote this response to a Farrah Mina article in The Imprint about interviewing children in front of their alleged abusers. For the first time that we know of, a child welfare opinion piece has challenged the decades-old Progressive oversimplification that child protection workers are typically racist and that chil...

At our October 13th fundraiser and October 14th follow-up conference, Andrew Campbell , a pioneer in the emerging field of family violence, will explore the interrelationships among animal abuse, domestic violence and child maltreatment. Join Rich for a full discussion and analysis on this in this week's podcast. =========== Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota’s nonprofit mission is to strength...

The Minnesota Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) just issued a report on removing children from their families. Read their study or the Star Tribune editorial and summary of the report. OLA discovered that practices vary widely among counties, including the rate of removals, social services/law enforcement cooperation, and the availability of preventive services. This finding echoes other stu...

Seventeen child welfare experts from places such as Harvard Law School and the Hudson Institute published   “What Child Welfare is For” , a thoughtful response to the abolish child welfare movement .  It was written for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The AEI has a political agenda, so we are somewhat uneasy about this arrangement. Join Rich for a full discussion and analysis on...

Child protection standards in Minnesota only exist for the initial maltreatment report. All other decision points, for example when to investigate, when to take a case to court, and when to remove children or return them home, are informed by non-mandatory and often insufficiently detailed Department of Human Services Guidelines. As a result every county, unit, and caseworker are making decisions...

What do school shootings and child maltreatment have in common? Join Rich Gehrman for his insight and analysis in this week's podcast. ========== Support Safe Passage's work for Minnesota's most vulnerable children at www.safepassageforchildren.org/donate Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota’s nonprofit mission is to strengthen the Minnesota child welfare system so children are safe and can reac...

Maya’s Law passed last week on the final day of the 2022 Minnesota legislative session. Introduced by Foster Advocates , the bill requires workers to interview foster children separately from foster parents, keep a record of what was discovered during Family Assessments, and interview alleged maltreatment victims separately from adults if Substantial Child Endangerment or sexual abuse is alleged....

On Wednesday May 25th 2022 we interviewed Daniel Hatcher on the practice of counties and states seizing foster children’s income to pay for their placements. Daniel helped pass a bill in Maryland to end this practice, and is currently providing technical assistance on a bill to do the same in Minnesota as well.  He is a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. About 8% - 1...

This Star Tribune story documents that 145 teens who are dangerous to themselves or others lived at some point since last September in the M Health Fairview Masonic Children’s Hospital ambulance garage. The root cause of this problem is Baltimore’s Annie E. Casey Foundation.  Their lobbying got the 2018 Family First Act passed, which eliminates federal funding for residential treatment center...

Garments of 13 sexually abused children were exhibited last month at a convention of “Plain” churches, which include Amish, Mennonite and Brethren communities. As reported by the Associated Press , the display included dresses and head coverings for four- and five-year-olds, and even a onesie. Who is committing these abusive acts against children, and who is condoning it? Why? Who is speaking up f...

It has become commonplace to disparage public servants who “can’t break out of their silos”. But current efforts by Minnesota child welfare managers tell a more positive story. Details are still unfolding, but we wanted to share now that we have recently experienced above-and-beyond efforts where staffers pushed through bureaucratic constraints, brought constituents together, and got the job done...

Early findings from our current research on Minnesota child murders show high risk cases being assigned to Family Assessment, the minimal-accountability version of child protection. To date this study documents parents who got this virtual free pass despite refusing medical treatment for children injured in a car crash, enabling sexual abuse of an infant, and a criminal conviction for malicious pu...

Many observers expected child abuse to increase during covid because it would be hidden from mandated reporters, giving abusers free rein. However this JAMA Pediatrics article asserts that child maltreatment decreased during covid, as measured by child-abuse related Emergency Department (ED) visits. Conversely, this AAP News article demonstrates that while visits were indeed fewer, they were more...

Professionals in domestic abuse programs, also called Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) prefer that victims decide for themselves when to leave a dangerous relationship. Children’s Protective Services (CPS) however responds to child abuse allegations immediately. What happens when both forms of violence co-occur? What other difficulties arise between victims' advocates? Is there common ground? How c...

Research cited in this Child Welfare Monitor article indicates that most poor parents do not neglect their children.  So when poor families are screened into child protection it raises the concern that this is happening because mandated reporters and child protection workers have trouble distinguishing poverty from neglect. What do the national and state statistics show? How is neglect define...

This week's blog is: On the political left, the UpEND movement wants to abolish child welfare.  This includes letting communities decide the fate of children who can’t stay with their parents.  Such a process, with no regulation or enforceable guidelines, could not be relied on to keep children safe or produce decisions in their best interests.  It could easily open the door to anyo...

Approximately 10%-12% of foster children are entitled to Social Security benefits either because of a disability, or as survivors of parents who paid into the system.  Most Minnesota counties use these revenues to pay for foster care. This fact sheet has details. However House File 3211 , authored by Rep. Dave Pinto, preserves these funds for youth when they reach adulthood. The Department of...

This week we interviewed Child Welfare Monitor blogger Marie Cohen for a combined webinar/podcast. The Monitor makes child welfare research accessible to those not in the business. In the process it has challenged many child welfare myths that, despite having no empirical basis, are widely accepted as fact simply because they have been repeated so often.  Join Rich for a full discussion on th...

The federal Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) just released 2020 child maltreatment reports, more than a year after the reporting periods. They showed wide variations among states and counties. Why is that? What is happening? What needs to change? Join Rich for a full discussion on this plus his in-depth commentary and analysis in t...

Guardians ad litem (GALs) represent the best interests of the child in Juvenile Court maltreatment proceedings.  They may be paid staff or volunteers.  Volunteer GALs are recruited and trained by the nonprofit CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates). CASA volunteers have become passionate advocates for children.  And they often can spend more time with children than paid GALs, who...

Child welfare and early childhood development advocates are both concerned about the lifelong impact of trauma, neglect, and abuse on brain development, especially in infants and toddlers. But often our advocacy in child development arenas for child safety has been deflected with pointed reminders about the trauma caused by removing children from their families, and the importance of respecting fa...

Volunteers and friends of Safe Passage are starting a support group for adult survivors of child abuse. Similar groups, such as SNAP for survivors of sexual abuse by priests, have found that sharing one’s story with people who have had similar experiences can generate healing that therapy doesn’t always accomplish. Their ground rules open with this statement: “We who have survived childhood abuse...

This week Canadian First Nations (Indigenous tribes) and the federal government reached a $31.5B ($40B US) settlement to both fund child welfare reforms and compensate children and their families for harms inflicted by the system. Half of this Agreement will fund reparations to the 115,000 children removed from their homes since 1991, and half to repair Indigenous child welfare programs. The Agree...

This “just-when-you-thought-it-couldn’t-get-worse” New York Times article documents a “shadow foster care” system that tells parents to find their own foster care or else the state will take their children. The quality of Minnesota’s foster care system is uneven.  But a non-system would be worse. This testimony to a District of Columbia Oversight Committee details the consequences.  They...

Good journalists deliver objective reports that we can rely on. They quickly grasp topics that others have worked on for years to assemble fact-based, informative stories. This week for example Star Tribune editorial page writer D.J. Tice reminded us that many of the reforms recommended by the 2015 Governor’s Child Protection Task Force have been rejected by Minnesota child welfare managers, but p...