Off Ramps to Child Protection
Hennepin County, the NAACP, Village Arms, Adult Representation Services-Hennepin County, Harriet Tubman Center, and the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare are partnering with Research in Action to explore how to prevent family separation and develop systems that support the reunification of Black and Native families.
Partners
NAACP: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
In the early stages, the NAACP joined the project as a thought partner in gathering initial project ideas and research approaches, leveraging their experience serving people of color in Hennepin County.
Village Arms
Village Arms joined the project in its early stages as a thought partner and continued to serve as a consultant for its research approaches. The partnership offers strategic guidance and technical support.
ARS-HC: Adult Representation Services – Hennepin County
ARS joined the work in the early stages as a thought partner and then continued to serve as a consultant for project research approaches. The partnership offers strategic guidance, community connections, and policy/legal support.
Hennepin County Child Protection Services
During the initial stage of the project, Hennepin County Child Protection Services joined the work as a key partner, organizing community engagement events for data collection and providing strategic guidance, community connections, and logistical and resource support. When RIA started seeking opportunities to engage Native American community voices in the data collection process, Hennepin County’s newly hired Native American Community Engagement Coordinator stepped in and supported RIA in conducting additional data collection.
Harriet Tubman Center
Tubman began partnering with RIA as a key stakeholder, serving as a potential “off-ramp” resource to connect RIA with data collection opportunities and provide insight into working with CPS.
Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare /Minnesota Child Welfare Training Academy
The Center/Academy began partnering with RIA as a key stakeholder, serving as the mandated reporter training designer to connect RIA with data collection opportunities and provide insight into the complexities of the current Minnesota mandated reporter management and training system.
Problem
Right now, Black youth make up just 20% of all residents under 18 years old in Hennepin County — but 34% of child protection cases. Similarly, Native youth make up less than 1% percent of all youth, but 6% of child protection cases.
This project aims to understand and examine how families come to the attention of child services, and to identify particular off-ramps that can prevent family separation for those disproportionately impacted by these processes. Research in Action intends to map out how families encounter child services and locate resources available to them through third parties, with a specific focus on low-income families of color, who are often overpoliced and have many more system interactions, to understand how access to resources or investments could support stability.
Process
Research in Action interviewed six key informants within the Child Welfare ecosystem and invited these key actors to name the barriers families encounter and what resources they believe would have been helpful before a formal case was filed. Then, we recruited, prepared, and held three community engagement events, gathering a total of 30 community members who had experience in the child protection system within the past two years or currently had an open case.
During these group conversations, we were able to expand on what the key informants referred to as CPS still being a “very white” system that disproportionately impacts families of color. From these learnings, we reached out to and established relationships with additional key stakeholders at organizations to conduct further data collection to expand on preliminary findings.
Solutions
Stay tuned for updates as this work moves forward!