MAAFPA’s stated goals emphasize preventing unnecessary removals and preserving African American and other disproportionately represented families, while the Safe Passage data show rising deaths—largely from neglect, substance use, and domestic violence—often in cases where CPS already knew the family.
Minnesota’s Hennepin County Judge Matthew Frank struck down the rollout of MAAFPA because it created a race-based government policy in violation of the 14th Amendment.
What if a revised act were expanded to include all cases/children instead of being focused on only African-American families? If we applied the same standard to all, one that is reconciled with safe passages recommendations, would disproportionality resolve itself and the constitutionality issue go away?
Goals and Structure of MAAFPA (Minnesota African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act)
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MAAFPA declares that Minnesota must protect the best interests of African American and other disproportionately represented children by preserving their families whenever safely possible.
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The law raises legal thresholds for removal and termination of parental rights (TPR), requires “active efforts” to prevent placement and to reunify, and establishes an African American Child Well-Being Unit, Advisory Council, and grants for family preservation services.
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It is explicitly modeled on ICWA/MIFPA-style protections, creating placement preferences (kin, community, culturally connected homes), emphasizing safety planning and TPLPC instead of TPR, and restricting courts from terminating rights solely for non-completion of case plans.
Key Findings in the Safe Passage Fatality Report
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Safe Passage recent investigative report identified 44 child maltreatment fatalities in Minnesota from June 1, 2023 to December 31, 2024—about 28 deaths per year, up from roughly 20 per year in earlier periods, even as the child population slightly declined.
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63.63% of these deaths were due to neglect, with leading mechanisms including fentanyl poisoning, asphyxiation (often unsafe sleep with impaired caregivers), and gunshot wounds tied to unsecured firearms.
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75% of the children were age three or younger, and about half of the families (50%) had prior CPS contact, often with multiple prior reports and open cases at the time of the child’s death.
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Substance abuse co-occurred in 40.9% of cases, and domestic violence in 52.27% of cases, while biological parents were primarily responsible for 86.36% of fatalities, with mothers listed as the primary perpetrator in half of all deaths.
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The report criticizes systemic minimization of neglect, overuse of low‑accountability response paths (Family Assessment, voluntary services), weak safety plans, limited use of removal in serious neglect/substance abuse situations, and low criminal accountability—especially in neglect deaths.
Points of Alignment
In several respects, Safe Passage’s recommendations are conceptually aligned with what MAAFPA could support if implemented with a strong safety lens.
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Data and transparency: Safe Passage stresses that lack of transparent data on fatalities and near‑fatalities impedes reform and calls for strict adherence to statutory transparency requirements; MAAFPA similarly builds infrastructure (well‑being unit, advisory council, reporting responsibilities) that could support better tracking of racial disparities and outcomes, including deaths and near‑deaths.
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Special focus on disproportionately impacted communities: Both MAAFPA and Safe Passage highlight the overrepresentation and higher fatality burden for Black, Native American, and multi‑racial children, with Safe Passage noting Native children die at nearly double their child‑protection representation rate and Black/multi‑racial children remain overrepresented.
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Systemic policy on domestic violence and substance use: Safe Passage calls for a “systemic policy regarding domestic violence” that prioritizes child safety and recognizes the lethal risk of parental substance use; MAAFPA’s “active efforts” framework and specialized unit could, in theory, be used to develop more culturally responsive, safety‑oriented interventions in these exact areas for African American and other impacted families.
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Accountability and quality of practice: MAAFPA requires documented active efforts, higher judicial findings before TPR, and oversight mechanisms, which could be harnessed to improve the quality and enforceability of safety plans—one of Safe Passage’s core recommendations.
Points of Tension and Risk
Safe Passage’s findings also expose potential conflicts or unintended consequences if MAAFPA is interpreted or implemented as primarily “reunification first,” without recalibrating for the severity of neglect and the lethality of parental behavior in some cases.
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Neglect minimization vs. fatal neglect: Safe Passage finds that 63.63% of deaths are neglect‑based, with patterns like repeated unsafe sleep while intoxicated, unsecured firearms, and failure to secure urgently needed medical care, and argues that Minnesota has systematically minimized neglect and left children in patently unsafe homes.
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By contrast, MAAFPA’s core structure is to make removal and TPR harder and to emphasize maintaining children in or returning them to their families, which—if paired with ongoing minimization of neglect—could increase exposure time in dangerous environments, especially for infants and toddlers.
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High‑risk infants and young children: Safe Passage recommends, among other things, that infants born with withdrawal be placed on emergency hold until there is a meaningful, measurable, enforceable safety plan, and that children 0–3 not be assigned to Family Assessment and not remain in obviously unsafe homes.
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MAAFPA’s requirements for “active efforts” and higher removal thresholds could, depending on practice, delay emergency protective action in precisely these high‑risk situations unless the law is interpreted to permit rapid removal where neglect and substance use present imminent danger.
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Domestic violence screening and exposure: Safe Passage shows that over half of fatalities co‑occur with domestic violence and criticizes intake rules that screen out DV calls when children are “only” exposed rather than physically injured, while also documenting frequent DANCO violations and poor enforcement.
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If MAAFPA is operationalized with an over‑narrow focus on avoiding removals, agencies will continue to leave children in homes where Domestic Violence is chronic but “only” witnessed, reinforcing a pattern the report identifies as lethal for children and their caregiving parents.
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Criminal accountability vs. preservation bias: Safe Passage documents that biological parents—especially in neglect deaths—are less likely to be charged and receive shorter sentences than non‑parents, and that neglect perpetrators are charged at only 39.28% compared to 76.92% for physical abuse.
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A strong policy and cultural bias toward preserving and reunifying families, reinforced by MAAFPA’s higher thresholds for TPR and removal, could contribute to a climate where prosecutors and courts lean away from serious charging in parent‑perpetrated fatalities and near‑fatalities, undermining deterrence and accountability.
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How the Two Frameworks Could Be Reconciled in Practice
A safety‑first implementation of MAAFPA would need to deliberately incorporate Safe Passage’s findings, especially around neglect, infants/toddlers, and cumulative risk.
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Reframing “active efforts” around lethal risk: “Active efforts” could be interpreted to require: rigorous risk assessment for neglect, substance use, DV, and prior CPS contact; swift escalation from voluntary services and Family Assessment to investigation when risk compounds; and strong safety plans that are specific, enforced, and tied to clear consequences for non‑compliance.
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Operational rules for high‑risk situations: Agencies and courts could adopt practice standards that mirror Safe Passage recommendations—automatic emergency holds for drug‑exposed newborns until strict safety conditions are met; prohibiting Family Assessment for children 0–3 with serious risk factors; and treating repeated neglect (unsafe sleep, unsecured firearms, failure to obtain medical care) as presumptive grounds for removal rather than reasons to “try more services.”
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Embedding accountability into preservation: MAAFPA’s preservation goals can coexist with a stronger insistence that parents demonstrate actual behavioral change (sobriety, safe storage of firearms, compliance with DV orders, stable mental health treatment), not just service attendance, before reunification—mirroring Safe Passage’s recommendation to base decisions on behavior, not box‑checking.
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Data tracking and race‑conscious safety metrics: The African American Child Well‑Being Unit and advisory mechanisms could monitor not just removals and TPRs, but also fatalities and near‑fatalities by race, age, county, CPS history, and presenting problems (neglect, DV, substance use), using Safe Passage’s database as a benchmark and looking for whether preservation policies correlate with increased or decreased deaths.
Big Picture Takeaway
Conceptually, MAAFPA seeks to correct documented racial disproportionality and unnecessary family separation, while the Safe Passage investigation reveals a parallel crisis of rising child deaths—primarily neglect‑driven, heavily concentrated among very young children and in families already known to CPS.
The two can be reconciled only if MAAFPA’s family‑preservation mandate is implemented with much stronger attention to the lethality of chronic neglect, substance use, and domestic violence, especially for infants and toddlers; if “active efforts” are understood to include timely removal when parents cannot or will not change dangerous behavior; and if data on fatalities, near‑fatalities, and accountability are systematically tracked and publicly reported across racial groups and counties.
Call and share this article with your State Representative.
At risk children will be safer and healthier with more transparency
and the better policies that come from it.
INVISIBLE CHILDREN / KIDS AT RISK ACTION / KARA
#MAAFPA #SafePassageMN #ChildSafety #CPSReform #MNChildDeaths #BlackFamilies #DomesticViolence #ChildNeglect #KARA, #fostercare,#childprotection
