In addition to Article 3 and Article 17 (Northstar Care for Children), there are other areas within Chapter 108 (the omnibus Health and Human Services finance bill) that are directly applicable to children and families involved in the child welfare system. These are just a few. Safe Harbor for Sexually Exploited Youth The Safe Harbor [...]
Yesterday Governor Dayton signed the omnibus Health & Human Services (HHS) Finance bill, making it Chapter 108 in the 2013 Session Laws. The main point of this bill was to establish the HHS budget, but there are also policy changes that will impact child welfare. One big change from earlier versions of the bill is [...]
On Sunday Governor Dayton and House and Senate leaders announced that they had come to an agreement on budget targets for the next biennium. This announcement was particularly important for those of us in the health and human services field, as Governor Dayton and the legislative leaders had different ideas regarding the budget target for [...]
The Health & Human Services Omnibus bill (H.F. 1233) in the Minnesota legislature has been slowly moving forward. Because the Senate and House did not agree on the bill text of H.F. 1233, there is a conference committee for the bill. This morning the HHS Conference Committee met from 8 AM to 10 AM and [...]
Update 4/16/13, 11:09 AM - Content clarification Update 4/5/13, 11:05 AM - Content clarification On Wednesday in the House Health and Human Services (HHS) Finance committee, Assistant Commissioner of Child and Family Services Erin Sullivan Sutton provided a walk-through of Governor Dayton's updated HHS budget recommendations from his supplemental budget as they pertain to children [...]
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 [...]
This guest blog post, also about the Family Reunification Act, was written by Colleen Doescher-Train. On February 13th, 2013 five Minnesota State Senators introduced S.F.422; appropriately nicknames the Family Reunification Act of 2013. The Family Reunification Act, as currently written would allow parents who had their parental rights terminated at least 36 months ago to [...]
Today's guest post was written by Kris LaFleur. What to do with children reaching the age of majority has been an ageless problem since the inception of the foster care system. Many youth are considered difficult to place; older children, sibling groups, African American and American Indian children. These lost children are forced to leave, [...]