Child Welfare

Making sure the children in our communities are safe should be a top priority for our state. Amy supports legislation that strengthens laws for crimes against children and makes sure programs needed for children are fully funded. Minnesota’s Child Welfare System continues to receive cuts and decrease prevention efforts that protect the safety and well-being of children involved in the system. Amy has a vision of a racially just system that works hard with community partners to decrease the racial disparities in foster care, child protection, and public adoption programs. We need to reform and refinance our child welfare system so it protects the children involved in the system. To do this Amy supports the following recommendations:

• Department of Human Services should work with community agencies t o research, assemble, and publish data on our child welfare systems and track outcomes on a more regular basis.
• The Federal Child and Family Services Review process should be modified to specifically assess racial disparities in outcomes for children and youth in the system.
• The State Program Improvement Plans that are developed as a result of the review process should include evidence based strategies to reduce disparities in outcomes.
• Minnesota should enhance the adoption of specific practices such as community partnerships, family group decision-making, and structured decision-making that can minimize bias where discretion exists. Other promising practice strategies include cultural competence training for service providers and child protective service workers, subsidized guardianships for relative care and greater access, incentives and resources for home-based services.
• Continued support of the Ramsey County Permanent Families Recruitment Project

Amy is a strong advocate and fully supports programs for aged out foster care children and youth experiencing homelessness, including all aspects of the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act. Amy believes we need to have a stronger emphasis on Independent Living Skills curriculum, and that this curriculum should be enhanced and have stronger, more accountable outcomes as it relates to the social worker providing the curriculum. We are not preparing our teenage foster children, who have no options if not adopted, for success and this needs to change.

Amy fully understands how impactful cuts are on county and local agency workers, and how difficult it is to enhance and provide services with increased case loads and fewer resources. Amy will advocate keeping programs intact and will work diligently to find creative solutions with a variety of partners to increase funding.