This story was originally published by The Imprint, a national nonprofit news outlet covering child welfare and youth justice. Sign up for The Imprint’s free newsletters here.
Alayna Ghost tried to run away almost every year she was in Minnesota foster care between the ages of 7 and 18. Almost always, she was trying to find her family.
On the run, she’d try to call her mother or grandmother — anyone whose phone number she could remember — hoping to be connected to some of her five siblings. But no one ever picked up the phone, she recalled, so she would end up back in her placements, a succession of at least eight foster or relatives’ homes and three residential facilities.
“I don’t really know what it’s like to have sibling relationships,” said Ghost, now 28 and living in Superior, Wisconsin, while she works at Applebee’s. “I’ll never know what it’s like to have that true sister-brother bond.”
Ghost’s experience is far from isolated, according to a recent report by the Minnesota Office of the Foster Youth Ombudsperson that describes “a consistent lack of support for regular, ongoing contact with foster youths’ siblings, regardless of whether those siblings were in foster care or not.”
What’s more, youth are not being informed of their right to visit and be placed together after they’re removed from their homes, the ombuds office found.
Susan Dioury — executive director of the nonprofit legal firm representing children in foster care — said seeing or contacting siblings is a common request the Children’s Law Center of Minnesota receives from its young clients.
“If you can imagine being separated from your parents, your biological parents, and then even worse, being separated from your siblings,” Dioury said, “it’s just even more traumatic.”
In its first full year of operation, the Foster Youth Ombudsperson received and investigated 200 complaints. Concerns from relatives, youth, caregivers and professionals ranged from safety issues in foster care to young people being unable to access their belongings. The investigation found that more than one-fourth of the complaints involved poor access to siblings.
Under Minnesota’s 2018 Sibling Bill of Rights, kids should be placed together or close geographically to facilitate “frequent and meaningful” contact. When possible, they should also be able to talk to any siblings who are not in foster care. Youth with siblings must be notified of these rights, according to the statute.
But the ombuds office could find no records showing that any of the 56 foster youth living away from siblings were informed that the statute existed. “Additionally, there are zero cases where, upon follow-up with the agency, notification had occurred but had not been documented,” the report states.
The report, released in August, noted that some siblings had experienced years without contact, even when there was no record of an ongoing safety concern. “In most cases where in-person sibling contact was restricted due to a safety issue, there were no other documented efforts of supporting sibling connection and no periodic check-ins with the foster youth regarding their readiness to restart or increase contact,” the report stated.
In an interview with The Imprint, Ombudsperson for Foster Youth Misty Coonce said she was surprised at how widespread the problem was — particularly given that the bill had already been in effect for years.
“For us to see seven years later that it really isn’t being implemented — probably anywhere close to what those young people were hoping and envisioning and celebrating once the bill was passed — that is incredibly hard,” Coonce said.
To correct the problem, Coonce’s office recommends clear guidance for caseworkers and that the state mandate documentation when youth have been notified of their right to sibling contact.
The ombuds office is also urging passage of the overarching Foster Youth Bill of Rights, a legislative effort that did not pass this year after it was introduced late in the session.
In a letter responding to the report, Rebecca St. George, an assistant commissioner at the Department of Children, Youth, and Families, praised the ombuds office for its work, acknowledged the concerns raised and conceded improvements are needed — including “clearer, more actionable tools and training.”
“We appreciate the focus on this critical aspect of child wellbeing, and we share your commitment to strengthening sibling relationships for youth in foster care,” she stated.
To remedy the problems, the department said it is committed to improving how it communicates expectations to local agencies.
“The lack of documented notification to youth and their caregivers regarding the Sibling Bill of Rights is concerning,” St. George wrote. “While current law does not require documentation of notification or signed forms, we recognize the importance of tracking this communication to ensure youth are fully informed.”
The department is also updating its Maintaining Connections for Children in Foster Care Practice Guide, based on the report’s recommendations. A draft is expected to be released this month.
A Hennepin County spokesperson said in an emailed statement that the county is also aware of the report and is working to review its findings and recommendations. She also described local success in keeping foster youth close to their brothers and sisters.
“Currently 86.1% of siblings in out-of-home placement in Hennepin County are together in the same location,” the statement said. “In situations where siblings are not together, we prioritize sibling visitation.”
Sibling connections in foster care
Hennepin County’s rates, as reported, are far higher than national averages, and the ombuds’ report makes clear there can be great variation among counties.
A 2020 analysis by Casey Family Programs found that between 53% and 80% of foster children across the country live separately from their siblings, depriving them of many benefits. Children placed with siblings are more likely to achieve permanent homes through reunification, adoption and guardianship, according to research cited by the federal Administration on Children, Youth and Families’ Children’s Bureau.
Sibling separation issues were among the first complaints Coonce’s office reviewed after it opened in 2024. In that year, the average number of children in care on any given day was around 5,865, based on preliminary data from the Department of Children, Youth and Families — a group of young people who are disproportionately Native American and Black.
Coonce said ombuds staff reviewed case notes to see if workers had informed youth, parents, or relatives of the sibling bill of rights, but found no such notifications.
Initially, “we weren’t even looking for that,” she said. “But it just kind of kept coming up over and over and over again.”
The report found that at least one sibling visit was canceled “as a consequence” for a youth’s behavior, though Coonce said it’s unclear how often that happened. Her office noted resistance from some foster parents to support frequent visits and found that youth lost contact with adopted siblings. Visits with siblings 18 and older had been restricted or canceled, the report found.
Though caseworkers routinely direct questions to the ombuds office about legal requirements and how to best support youth, the report stated that the state’s current guidance on sibling connections is lacking.
“Workers need clearer understanding and guidance of what their role is in informing youth about their Sibling Bill of Rights, how they should document it, what the definition of a sibling is — that it includes siblings in and out of care,” Coonce said. “That was a big thing that we saw.”
The write-up overlaps with Foster Advocates’ recent Minnesota Promise Report, which found sibling separation can be “one of the most traumatic aspects of entering care.” Youth lack awareness about their right to stay together, and find it hard to stay in touch. The report called for further implementation of policies on sibling connection, guaranteed visits and reunification events.
‘Somebody dropped the ball’
Rep. Peggy Bennett, the chief author of the 2018 bill that contained the Sibling Bill of Rights, said she was disappointed to learn that foster youth are not being told of their guarantees, and when they are, caseworkers are not documenting the instructions. She also said she plans to reach out to a legislative staffer for more information on weak aspects of enforcement.
“You have to trust that the executive branch is overseeing these and doing it the right way. But obviously, in this case, there’s some kind of gap, and somebody dropped the ball somewhere,” she said. “It really, really saddens me and disappoints me that that’s not happening.”
Ghost, who was abused by an older brother, said being separated from the rest of her five siblings left her wondering what having a relationship unshaped by trauma could have been like.
In foster care, she did not learn she had an older sister until a social worker told her at age 13. Visits between her and some of her siblings happened just once a year, she said, and they were never all placed together.
“Whenever I did mention just wanting to be with my siblings again, they just told me it wasn’t reasonable. It wasn’t going to work out.‘We can’t do that. It can’t happen,’” she said.
Visits or plans to meet would be canceled, she said, because one of the siblings did not behave as adults wanted — sometimes for acting “defiant.” Her younger brother used to act out after reuniting with family, prompting some visits to be canceled.
“I remember those days,” Ghost said. “Taking away those visits – what is that gonna to do? That’s going to cause more behavioral issues. That’s going to cause more damage.”
These days, she says she only keeps in touch with one sibling.
“It’s very mentally damaging,” Ghost said. “Just wishing I had memories to share and memories to laugh about that aren’t traumatizing.”
