The Minnesota African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act responds to real harms: Black children are reported to CPS and removed from their homes at two to seven times the rate of white children, and there is a painful record of Black children being abused or killed in foster care placements. The law requires intensive efforts to keep families intact and to secure culturally appropriate services, such as locating relative placements, arranging culturally matched therapy, and even transporting parents to treatment. There is also a painful record of significantly more Black children being abused or killed in birth homes where removal was necessary but didn’t happen.
Counties and county attorneys warn that the child protection system is already “overwhelmed and pervasively understaffed,” and that implementing these heightened preservation duties statewide would require substantial new investment that has not been funded, especially in rural areas. When agencies are ordered to do more for many families but are not given additional staff, money, or available services, the practical result is often that workers become more reluctant to file petitions or seek removal, even when evidence of danger is strong, because the procedural and political barriers are higher.
Mechanisms of harm: from delay to fatality
Safe Passage–style investigations in multiple jurisdictions show a repeating pattern: agencies prioritize family reunification and “least restrictive” options, keep children in or quickly return them to high-risk homes, and downplay or ignore escalating warning signs to avoid removal—until the child is seriously injured or killed. In these cases, policy signals that removal is a “last resort” interact with underfunding, high caseloads, and fear of backlash over disproportionality to push decision-making toward inaction, not thoughtful alternative safety planning.
KARA’s compilation of child death and near-fatality stories reflects the same dynamics:
-
Children left or returned to homes with long histories of reports, domestic violence, substance abuse, or prior terminations of parental rights “because the agency was trying to keep the family together.”
-
Judges and caseworkers explicitly citing preservation mandates while rejecting recommendations from front-line staff or medical professionals who are warning about imminent danger.
-
Children of color who were removed unnecessarily in some cases, but a significant number of others were left in deadly situations because agencies were under pressure to reduce removals of overrepresented groups without equivalent pressure to guarantee safety.
Rural and structural constraints
The Minnesota article highlights an additional layer of risk: rural counties like Brown and Otter Tail estimate that roughly 90% of their caseload would qualify for the extra preservation efforts, yet they do not have the therapists, transportation infrastructure, or staffing to provide what the statute promises. Administrators acknowledge they “like the idea behind the new law,” but without funding they cannot actually deliver the services; at the same time, they will face legal and political risk if they remove children without first exhausting the heightened preservation requirements. This creates an unsafe bind where children remain in harmful environments while counties struggle to comply on paper with mandates they cannot meet in practice.
When intent and outcome diverge
KARA’s research and writing, along with investigative series on child deaths, underscores that history is full of reforms that were meant to fix one injustice and quietly fed another. Efforts to correct racial disproportionality and over-removal are essential, but when laws focus narrowly on preventing foster care placements without:
-
explicit child-safety guardrails,
-
independent fatality review and transparency, and
-
robust new investments in housing, income, mental health, and substance use services,
they shift risk from the system onto the children themselves. The consequence is that some children, particularly in already overburdened communities, will be kept in homes that agencies know are dangerous because the legal and political cost of removal is higher than the cost of inaction—until a death makes those internal calculations visible.
For advocates and lawmakers, the lesson is not to abandon family preservation, but to pair it with enforceable safety standards, public accountability for child deaths and serious harm, and the funding needed to make “support first” a reality instead of an underfunded promise that children pay for with their lives.
Take a deeper dive in the Read More Below.
Minnesota records and investigations show that abused and neglected children are dying both in their birth homes and in foster care, including kinship foster homes that were supposed to be safer, and that these deaths are systematically documented in a handful of key public reports and lawsuits.
What Minnesota records show about child deaths
A detailed analysis by Safe Passage for Children of Minnesota, “Minnesota Child Fatalities from Maltreatment 2014–2022,” reports that 161 children died due to abuse or neglect over that period (PDF: https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf). The Safe Passage report notes that nearly half of these children (about 48%) were killed by someone other than a biological parent, including mothers’ partners and kinship foster parents (same PDF: https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf).
Within that total, Safe Passage identifies seven children killed in foster care, six of them in kinship foster placements, and flags this as “a concerning number of children killed in foster care, primarily kinship placements” (https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf).[2]
Minnesota’s official Child Maltreatment Reports from the Department of Human Services add context by showing how many children die each year from maltreatment statewide.
The 2021 report, “Minnesota’s Child Maltreatment Report, 2021,” documents 28 child maltreatment deaths, while the 2022 report lists 31 deaths, and both note that in roughly half of fatal cases the child or family had prior child protection involvement (2021 PDF: https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2023/mandated/231362.pdf; 2022 PDF: https://www.lcc.mn.gov/tfcp/meetings/2025/MN-child-maltreatment-report-2022).
The 2023 corrected statewide report continues this pattern of dozens of deaths annually in families known to the system (2023 PDF: https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2025/mandated/251621.pdf).[3]
Individual lawsuits and county press releases put names and narratives to some of the foster‑care deaths. An article in The Imprint titled “Minnesota Counties Sued in Death of Child in Foster Care” describes the case of 17‑month‑old Layla Jackson, who died in 2018 in an unlicensed emergency foster home; the lawsuit alleges that Hennepin and Scott counties placed her with caregivers who were not properly screened and ignored warnings about danger in the home (https://imprintnews.org/foster-care/minnesota-counties-sued-death-child-foster-care/52993 and extended coverage at https://imprintnews.org/child-welfare-2/lawsuit-alleges-fatal-lapses-emergency-foster-care/53051).
A Minnesota firm, SiebenCarey, details another case in its blog post “Lawsuit: State Gave Child Foster Care License to Known Abuser,” involving 6‑year‑old Kendrea Johnson, whose 2014 death in a licensed foster home is tied in the complaint to poor screening and ignored safety concerns (https://www.knowyourrights.com/blog/siebencarey-files-civil-lawsuit-following-death-of/).
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office press release “Foster mother pleads guilty in death of three-year-old” describes the death of 3‑year‑old Arianna Hunziker, who died in 2017 due to abuse and neglect in a foster placement (https://www.hennepinattorney.org/en/news/news/2019/October/dirk-10-4-2019).[6]
Foster homes vs. birth homes: where children are dying
Commentary on the Safe Passage report in Child Welfare Monitor (“The Minnesota Child Maltreatment Fatalities Report: Essential Reading for Child Advocates”) emphasizes that most child maltreatment deaths in Minnesota still occur in birth homes and that perpetrators are most often parents or their partners (https://childwelfaremonitor.org/2023/03/05/the-minnesota-child-maltreatment-fatalities-report-essential-reading-for-child-advocates/).
Safe Passage’s own data show that across the 2014–2022 fatalities, the most common perpetrators were mothers (27.3%), mothers’ partners (23.9%), and fathers (22.7%), with over 65% of cases involving caregiver substance abuse (again, see the Minnesota Child Fatalities report PDF: https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf).
This pattern mirrors national NCANDS‑based research on fatal and non‑fatal child maltreatment, which finds that biological parents and their partners are responsible for the majority of child abuse deaths (for example, see the article “Fatal and non-fatal child maltreatment in the US” on ScienceDirect: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014521341300327X and NCANDS overview at https://acf.gov/cb/data-research/ncands).[10]
What makes the Minnesota record distinctive, according to Safe Passage and Child Welfare Monitor, is how clearly it documents that some children are being killed in foster care—especially in kinship placements—after the state has already intervened (Safe Passage PDF: https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf and analysis at https://childwelfaremonitor.org/2023/03/05/the-minnesota-child-maltreatment-fatalities-report-essential-reading-for-child-advocates/).
The seven foster‑care deaths between 2014 and 2022 represent a small fraction of total fatalities, but they are systemically important because these children had already been removed for safety and placed under county or state custody.
Shared system failures in both settings
Safe Passage’s Minnesota report and the Child Welfare Monitor commentary describe parallel system errors in birth homes and foster homes.
In birth homes, many children who later died had histories of multiple reports, domestic violence, substance use, or prior removals; the report estimates that 26% of children who died had been previously removed and returned to their families, sometimes against front‑line recommendations (https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf and https://childwelfaremonitor.org/2023/03/05/the-minnesota-child-maltreatment-fatalities-report-essential-reading-for-child-advocates/).[2]
In foster care, particularly kinship foster care, the same sources argue that agencies often prioritized family preservation and quick placement over safety, placing children with relatives who had their own histories of violence, substance abuse, or instability and then failing to provide adequate monitoring or support (Safe Passage PDF: https://safepassageforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Gehrman-R.-Karrow-M.-2023.-Minnesota-Child-Fatalities-from-Maltreatment-2014-2022.pdf; lawsuits summarized in The Imprint at https://imprintnews.org/foster-care/minnesota-counties-sued-death-child-foster-care/52993 and https://imprintnews.org/child-welfare-2/lawsuit-alleges-fatal-lapses-emergency-foster-care/53051).
Opinion pieces like “Why a Minnesota law to limit foster care removals could hurt children” from Center of the American Experiment argue that reforms aimed at reducing removals and favoring kinship placement can increase risk if they are not paired with rigorous safety standards and oversight (https://www.americanexperiment.org/why-a-minnesota-law-to-limit-foster-care-removals-could-hurt-children/).[7]
Taken together, these records support a nuanced conclusion:
-
Most maltreatment deaths in Minnesota are still caused by parents or their partners in birth homes known to child protection, showing failures to act or to sustain protective interventions.
-
A smaller but critical subset of children are killed in foster care, mostly in kinship homes, highlighting failures in screening, licensing, placement decisions, and monitoring once the state has intervened (as documented by Safe Passage, The Imprint, SiebenCarey, and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office: PDFs and articles linked above).
Minnesota’s record shows that child safety is jeopardized both when agencies leave children too long in dangerous birth homes and when they place children in unsafe foster homes, making clear that any “family preservation” or kinship‑first policy must be balanced with transparent fatality review, strong safety thresholds, and real accountability when children die.
