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.
Minnesota lawmakers have directed $15 million to fund the African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act, a law meant to reduce disparities in the state’s foster care system.
The funding follows complaints by associations representing Minnesota counties, who’ve said they cannot implement the act’s provisions by the mandated January launch date due to lack of resources. Among other things, the new law requires social workers to make extra efforts to keep families together following allegations of abuse and neglect, if they represent populations that are overrepresented in the child welfare system.
Lawmakers included the new funding — and additional amendments to the act passed two years ago — into a larger package of health and human services bills passed late Sunday. The bill package now heads to Gov. Tim Walz, who has two weeks to sign it.
If enacted, counties would receive the funds based on the number of children who live within their borders as well as the number of screened-in reports of child abuse or neglect, and open child protection cases. The money would be used to pay for staffing and efforts to prevent foster care, reunify families and find permanent living options for children who cannot go back to their parents.
Senate President Bobby Joe Champion previously introduced some of the changes passed this weekend. The omnibus bill language requires counties to document how they determined whether children qualified for family preservation act provisions. It also clarifies the meaning of terms like “low-income socioeconomic status” and “disability.”
The African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act passed with bipartisan support in May 2024. It directed Hennepin and Ramsey counties to start enacting the law early, under phased-in pilot programs. To do so, the counties were awarded $5 million, but no additional funding was allocated for other parts of the state.
A spokesperson for the Association of Minnesota Counties and the Minnesota Association of County Social Service Administrators told legislators last month that local governments have been “increasingly concerned” about whether they can implement the law.
County officials are also worried about case reviews, which require their staff to write reports about how social workers tried to keep families together, and to track the disparities in their child protection systems. Counties urged the Legislature to make the state responsible for these reviews, but that task was not included in the final bill language and will stay at a local level.
A spokesperson said the two county associations were not ready to comment on the changes as members are reviewing the bill.
