Thank you, Safe Passage, For Children of Minnesota for your insightful policy article yesterday (8.23.24).
You pointed out that 20% of abused children reported to CPS had multiple reports within the year. 30,000 cases were screened in during 2023 (screening out over 50,000 children) and 20% of abused children suffering “substantial child endangerment” were not seen within the legally required 24 hours.
20% is an improvement over the 2016 report when 55% were not seen on time but it is a painful failure to the children left in horrid circumstances.
Many CPS workers face extremely high caseloads, which can hinder their ability to effectively manage and address each case. For example, in 2022, CPS workers in Utah had an average of 174 cases per worker, the highest in the U.S.. https://www.statista.com/statistics/417804/child-protective-services-caseload-per-worker-in-the-us/
High caseloads delay critical interventions and fall far short of providing the help abused and neglected children need.
- In 2015, a state task force recommended that child protection case management workers should not handle more than 10 cases.
- Hennepin County has been able to meet this target in recent years, bringing average caseloads down from 15-17 cases per worker previously.
In 2017, at a Task Force Oversight Committee Meeting County Commissioner Jan Callison called out CPS for leaving children in violent homes for days because public policy favored social workers over child safety.
You might remember that at that time, MN had one of lowest response times in the nation, four MN counties screened out 90% of the calls and that social workers were forbidden to review prior family histories of abuse when opening a new case. Our State is not immune to bad policy. To be fair, what does an overwhelmed institution do when caseloads double and budgets are cut? Rural counties will always be underfunded, understaffed and unable to provide the level of service larger urban areas can with their larger budgets giving them more options.
A bigger issue is the “limited statewide data to evaluate the performance of Minnesota’s child protection system” that you (Safe Passage) mention. This lack of comprehensive data makes it impossible to assess the overall effectiveness of CPS in responding to child endangerment cases.
“Limited Statewide Data” is an understatement according to some of us close to CPS.
When the Star Tribune’s Brandon Stahl reported on the slow tortured death of four-year-old Eric Dean. In the video interview links of the prior sentence, he remarks how he had to file multiple Freedom Of Information Act requests and how hard he had to fight to receive County information about how the boy died. It became obvious what the County did not want a public to know as he peeled back the onion of sad events that led to the boy’s death.
Safe Passage’s reporters have told us how four counties refused to participate, and no counties offered any information not already public in their Investigative Report on Child Fatalities from Maltreatment (while known to CPS).
It’s also relevant to remember that in the Star’s recent investigative reporting on CPS, employees, volunteers and management were told they would be fired immediately if they said anything to the press.
That the State does not track egregious harm and other critical information involving abused and neglected the children involved in CPS ensures that we will never know about the critical issues abused and neglected children face every day. History repeats itself every day.
We will save money, communities, and children when we track and report critical metrics of children in the system. The HIPPA laws are often used as an excuse for not doing so. This is a “Red Herring” according to Dee Wilson who stated that in delivering the Casey Foundations MN Child Endangerment report in the aftermath of Eric Dean’s death.
Please share this article with your State Representative and other policy makers you know.
The more they know, the better decisions they will make for you, me, and the children involved.
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