Two weeks ago DFL leaders announced their plans to cut $150 million from the base of the Health and Human Services (HHS) budget for the current biennium. This is in direct contrast to both Governor Dayton's proposal, which would have increased the HHS budget by $170 million, and the House and Senate DFL proposal to [...]
In February of 2012, the Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) released its findings on child protection screening and provided recommendations for the State to improve this process. As a response to the OLA recommendations, Sen. Jeff Hayden and Rep. Susan Allen introduced legislation this year to establish a child protection screening work group and [...]
Guest blog post by Caitlin Magistad. My name is Caitlin Magistad, and I'm excited to be a new guest blogger for the CASCW Child Welfare Policy blog! I'm a third year MSW student here at the University of Minnesota. I currently work as a case manager at a local family homeless shelter, and am doing [...]
Northstar Care for Children is a proposed program in Minnesota that consolidates Adoption Assistance, Relative Custody Assistance, and family foster care into just one program that would equalize payments for these programs for children ages 6 and older. This program aims to increase permanency through adoption or legal guardianship by a relative, recognizing that current [...]
We recently updated our first Child Welfare Policy Brief, which was a primer for Minnesota's 2011 legislative session, to reflect changes in statistics and funding between then and now. It is available on our child welfare policy section of our website. You can also click here for the PDF. More information CASCW publishes policy briefs [...]
On Monday, March 11, the House introduced its version of the omnibus health and human services finance budget bill, H.F. 1233; the Senate version, S.F. 1034, had been introduced March 4. As this is a budget year, this bill will be a main focus of our blogging, if not the main focus. Next week I [...]
Studies have found that children with disabilities experience a higher rate of maltreatment than children without disabilities, and that they are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system. For example, a study in 2000 by Sullivan and Knutsen showed that youth with disabilities were 3.4 times more likely to be maltreated. Last year, CASCW released [...]
In the 2011 legislative special session, the legislature passed a Safe Harbor law that began addressing how sexually exploited youth are viewed in the eyes of the law in Minnesota. Under this law, sexually exploited youth under age 18 are viewed as victims of crime (children in need of protection) rather than juvenile delinquents, at [...]