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.
Legislation introduced in late February would grant Minnesota’s Office of the Foster Youth Ombudsperson access to the digital database that tracks cases in the child welfare system — transparency that the watchdog office says is needed to ensure timely investigations into claims of mistreatment.
State Sen. Karin Housley is the author of the Senate bill, a follow-up to her original legislation which created the office in 2022. The new bill would grant the ombuds office the ability to “enter and inspect without notice any institution, facility, or residence” where a foster youth is living. To ensure foster youth are able to speak freely with the ombuds staff, the legislation also enables investigators to meet privately with children, in person, on the phone or through video calls. It also clarifies that foster youth cannot be retaliated against for making complaints to the ombudsperson.
In an interview with The Imprint, Housley said her legislation — co-authored in the House by Rep. Wayne Johnson — is needed because of the state Department of Children, Youth and Families and counties’ delayed responses to record requests.
“They’ve sometimes had to wait months of delay in receiving these records,” Housley said. “There have been cases where relevant records were omitted, and then there were cases where over 1,000 pages were sent, some in duplicate, requiring additional time to clean up and review.”
She stressed the importance of streamlining such access.
“You need the information about each case sooner rather than later,” she said. “When government tries to get in the way of protecting our youth, I think that is wrong.”
In an email, a spokesperson for the Department of Children, Youth and Families said the agency does “support better, more streamlined access to applicable data for Ombudspeople permitted to view specific data within a case file,” as long as it is allowable by law.
The spokesperson also cited some necessary limitations within its Social Service Information System, including health privacy requirements, privileged attorney-client communication and the disclosure of data that may not be “necessary and directly relevant to a complaint being reviewed by an Ombudsperson.” In such cases, “direct access is not feasible,” the spokesperson stated.
The agency acknowledged the current issue, however, noting that its child welfare modernization project now underway will address those limitations. A law passed in 2024 provides for the upgraded system to release “case-by-case access to nonprivileged information necessary for the discharge of the ombudsperson’s duties, including specific child protection case information, while protecting Tribal data sovereignty.”
More than 10,600 county, tribal and state employees use Minnesota’s Social Service Information System to record information about foster care and adoption cases, as well as other social services, mental health care, assistance for people living with disabilities and adult protective services.
Representatives of the ombuds office say access to the system is critical to ensuring they respond efficiently to foster youths’ complaints. Staff are charged with listening to the concerns of young people in foster care, which means reviewing records and interviewing caseworkers, caregivers and kids before staff write up investigations or make recommendations. Opened in May 2024, the office’s reports since then have examined topics such as the case of a teenager forced to live in a hotel for months and how counties failed to inform siblings of their rights to stay connected.
But ombuds staff say responses to case file requests from the Department of Children, Youth and Families and county agencies have too often lagged. Hannah Planalp, deputy ombudsperson, said that has made her work frustrating at times. In one case, an investigation that started late last year has stretched for months because of slow response times and multiple rounds of inquiries. At times, even when the bulk of the information is provided, documents are missing.
“And it’s just so hard to say — are they missing because pulling records and emailing them to someone is a burdensome task?” Planalp asked. “Were they omitted because they were relevant? I can’t say. What I do know is it just slowed me down so much.”
When asked about such delays, the state spokesperson said the agency makes “every effort to produce case records in response to verified records requests from ombudspersons within the 10 business day period allowed under state law.”
He added that currently his agency grants access to information when it is authorized by law, but that it must protect information from “inappropriate disclosure,” such as child protection case notes and documents that contain information protected by attorney-client privilege.
The Minnesota Association of County Social Service Administrators told The Imprint it is not taking a stance on the legislation.
The freedom to investigate
Though the Office of Ombudsperson for Families has been in place for far longer than the relatively new foster youth ombuds office, Deputy Ombudsperson Beth Chaplin said it has also suffered from a lack of access to the state information system.
That ombuds office was created in 1991 by lawmakers to serve families of color in Minnesota interacting with state and county child welfare agencies. The ombudsperson receives complaints, reviews, investigates and makes recommendations to remedy the complaints free of charge. Its purpose is “to help citizens experiencing confusion, unfairness, or non-responsiveness from government agencies or programs.”
Chaplin said in an email that all Minnesota ombuds offices dealing with child welfare issues should have access to the Social Service Information System. Otherwise, it “could position the Department as indicating that one demographic of Minnesotans takes priority over others in child protection matters.”
Approximately 45 ombuds offices represent children and families nationwide, though their exact responsibilities vary, said U.S. Ombudsman Association Board of Directors President Jordan Steffen. She said her office supports increased access to data for ombudspeople, as long as they are bound by confidentiality rules that protect sensitive information from being publicly disclosed.
“When you do not have access to full information, it is extremely difficult to do a thorough and thoughtful, independent reviewer investigation of the system for which we were created to reveal,” Steffen said. “We’re built to create accountability and transparency. We need access to do that work effectively.”
Slow response times and limited data access were familiar issues to Rochelle Trochtenberg, the California Foster Care Ombudsperson from 2016 to 2021. In an interview, she described difficulty early on in her tenure investigating foster youths’ claims against poor treatment in schools and residential settings — such as teenagers sleeping in a Sacramento intake office under banks of plastic chairs, or on air mattresses, fold-up mats and cots.
“We were basically treated like we were homeless,” a 19-year-old told The San Francisco Chronicle. “It made me feel like I wasn’t worth nothing. Like we were forgotten about.”
When Trochtenberg started investigating the Children’s Receiving Home of Sacramento, she asked a series of basic questions to county, state and receiving home officials: How many kids were coming in and out? How were social workers trying to find more appropriate placements? Where had these kids been living before they wound up sleeping on the floor, in an area notorious for human trafficking?
“I wanted data, and I wasn’t getting it,” she said. “County legal folks and agency legal folks wanted to push back on the legality of me having access to that information. And that meant that those kids — and the kid in particular who initiated my investigation into this — was delayed in finding a placement.” Trochtenberg’s solution to such frustrations was to advocate for legislation, which was signed into law in 2021. Its author pursued the bill to ensure that the foster youth ombudsperson had enough independence from the agency it was investigating, as well as the “freedom to investigate claims.” The changes, according to the bill analysis, “significantly strengthen the ability of this office to advocate for and protect our state’s foster youth.”
