Like many states, Minnesota’s child protection system faces serious challenges in its mission to protect children and support families. The balance between child safety and family preservation is elusive. Minnesota has swung the pendulum significantly to the side that prioritizes child removal by using investigative versus collaborative approaches to intervention and under-utilizing family foster care as the preferred removal placement. The last several years in Minnesota have brought an onslaught of policy changes in intake and screening processes relating to child protection, which, along with other factors (including a huge uptick in infant removals born with drugs in their system), has resulted in a dramatic and alarming increase in the number of children being removed from their parents’ care. The number of children placed in Minnesota’s foster care system has increased exponentially as there have more than 25,000 children are reported for abuse or neglect each year. Most children are removed due to neglect—not serious physical or sexual abuse. Irrespective of the cause, the fact that Minnesota had the sixth-highest removal rate in the United States is alarming and reason for reform.
When a child is removed from a home and placed in foster care, relatives are the preferred caregivers because this placement type keeps children connected with their families and communities, significantly reducing the initial trauma of removal. This is particularly true for communities of color, where maintaining a connection to identity, culture, and language can help alleviate additional trauma associated with placing these children in non-culturally supported homes. Additionally, children tend to be just as safe or safer, siblings are less likely to be separated, and relatives are frequently willing to adopt or become permanent guardians when reunification with parents is not possible. However, in Minnesota, only one out of approximately four children who enter foster care are placed with a relative. This falls below the national average of one in three children.
While there are many long-term and short-term benefits to placing a child in relative foster care, Minnesota has steadily created unnecessary statutory barriers for family members to become licensed foster caregivers. A single criminal conviction from a voluminous list precludes someone from serving as a foster caregiver. A prior maltreatment determination also disqualifies potential caregivers, even though these determinations are not based on an actual conviction but simply on a preponderance of the evidence standard.
Many of these barriers to fostering children disproportionately impact communities of color because persons in these communities tend to have a higher rate of interaction with the law. In Minnesota, people of color are arrested, charged, tried, and incarcerated at much higher rates than their white neighbors. Moreover, Minnesotans of color are nearly three times more likely to be charged with a serious crime than their white peers. This disparity largely exists after calculating black and American Indian residents, who are four to eight times more likely to be charged with a felony than whites. While the unnecessary barriers to foster care affect all races equally, the disparities within our criminal justice system expose communities of color to these disparities at a higher rate.
In addition to the statutory and cultural barriers that many relatives face in their attempt to care for related children, the process to become a caregiver is confusing and, in many cases, takes too long to be an effective or realistic option. The need to get a license is often urgent for relatives, so in order to facilitate family placements the process to apply for a license should be clear, easy to navigate, and expedited. Minnesota’s current emergency relative placement statute does not provide enough explanation about the initial application or the appeal process for the denial of an emergency license. Furthermore, the statute does not require that all relatives interested in becoming foster parents are provided an opportunity to apply for licensing with the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS).
Reform is necessary in Minnesota to address both the statutory and procedural barriers that impede relatives from being licensed as foster care providers. This article tracks the history of foster care licensing requirements in Minnesota, discusses the real-life story of a grandmother with a grandchild placed in foster care, explains the federal mandates established through the Adam Walsh Act, discusses the existing flaws in the process, and highlights the ways in which Minnesota’s current statutory scheme and processes disproportionally impact communities of color. Finally, the article provides recommendations for both statutory and rule changes that will help relatives seeking to care for children through foster care.