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Contact:
Katie Bauer
Communications
651-431-2911
Katie.Bauer@state.mn.us
The
Minnesota Department of Human Services awarded $1.5 million per year in grants
to eight tribes, counties and community agencies to reduce disparities in the
state’s child welfare system.
The Minnesota Legislature appropriated the funds to develop,
implement and evaluate activities to address disparities and disproportionality
in the child welfare system by:
- Identifying and addressing structural
factors that contribute to inequities in outcomes
- Identifying and implementing strategies to
reduce disparities in treatment and outcomes
- Using cultural values, beliefs and practices
of families, communities and tribes for case planning, service design and
decision-making processes
- Using placement and reunification
strategies to maintain and support relationships and connections between
parents, siblings, children, kin, significant others and tribes
- Supporting families in the context of
their communities and tribes to safely divert them from the child welfare
system, whenever possible.
Those receiving three-year grant awards are:
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EVOLVE
Adoption & Family Services, $309,810 for providing culturally appropriate support and
education for African American and American Indian parents involved in the
child protection system through a supervised visitation model. Goals include
helping families heal from trauma, intergenerational child abuse and neglect,
learning and applying healthy parenting skills, addressing mental health issues
that impact the parent-child relationship, and reducing the number of children
who re-enter foster care due to unresolved family issues. EVOLVE has strong partnerships
with Hennepin, Ramsey, Dakota and Washington counties.
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Indian
Child Welfare Act (ICWA) Law Center, $737,673 for expanding and fully implementing its ICWA Family
Advocacy Center, a multidisciplinary program for American Indian families
impacted by the child welfare system in Minnesota; the goal is to provide
comprehensive legal advocacy, social work advocacy, parent mentoring, and
intensive family support to empower Indian families to overcome the underlying
problems they face that put their children at risk for out-of-home placement;
the intensive interventions and legal advocacy are intended to help Indian
families stay together, and, for those who have already been separated, find
the services they need to be reunited
-
Lower
Sioux Community and Southwest Health and Human Services, $313,851
for a collaborative approach to decrease the disproportionate number of
out-of-home placements of American Indian children in the child protection
system by strengthening the partnership between the tribe and county to ensure
compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act, increasing the knowledge and
understanding of factors that contribute to child welfare disparities and
resiliency among American Indian communities within families and across sectors,
and improving positive maternal behaviors and choices by implementing an indigenous
and evidence-based family intervention program to support young and at-risk
American Indian mothers and their families
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Minneapolis
American Indian Center, $507,567 for the implementation
of the Bright Beginnings Recovery Support Project, which targets Native
American women who are pregnant or who have recently delivered, who have a
history of substance abuse and previous experience with the child protection
system; the goal of the project is to develop a system of support to help these
women address their substance abuse problems, maintain recovery and keep their
families intact
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Minnesota
Communities Caring for Children, $997,996 for expanding its
Parent Mentor Network, a program that matches parents with an open child
protection case with a parent mentor to help them navigate the child welfare
system; the primary goal is to reduce disparities experienced by children of
color, particularly those who are African American, American Indian, or
children of two or more races by providing support that meets the unique needs
of parents and families; the project improves child welfare outcomes by
strengthening parent engagement, valuing parents’ ideas and experiences
including parents’ perspectives throughout the process
-
Olmsted
County Community Services, $411,012 for enhancing Project
HOPE (Hope, Opportunity, Pride and Empowerment) and PACE (Parents and Children
Excel) programs to assist families before conditions deteriorate to the point
they require more intensive intervention; the project will focus on increasing
access to early education services, and identifying and serving families early who
run the greatest risk of negative educational outcomes
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Washington
County Community Services, $112,530 for an assessment of
factors that affect and influence disproportionality in the Washington County
child welfare delivery system, using a disproportionality diagnostic tool, the
administration and scoring of the Intercultural Development Inventory to create
an individual and system-focused training program to increase cultural
competence in its Children’s Division employees, and culturally specific
services targeted to reduce placement of children of color via Family Wise High
Fidelity Wraparound
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White
Earth Indian Child Welfare, $661,782 for the hiring of a
Cultural Placement coordinator, a Reentry Prevention coordinator and a Family
Skills worker to bring a holistic healing approach to working with Native
American families; the Cultural Placement coordinator will oversee the foster
care Re-entry Prevention and Family Skills work, and guide other program
workers to prevention- and intervention-focused work while implementing Ojibwe
cultural and way-of-life values and skills to the Native population served.
In the third year, the department will decide whether to
continue with these grantees or request proposals from other organizations for
additional funding.
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