As Minnesota considers child protection reforms, should responsibility fall to state or counties?

Though Minnesota is one of just nine states in which counties control the delivery of child protection services, there is no evidence that a purely state-run system would improve outcomes for abused children, experts told state legislators Thursday.

"Could we shift to more of a state-operated system? You could, but there is a trade-off," said Traci LaLiberte, executive director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare at the University of Minnesota. "There [are] huge financial implications. It isn't necessarily going to garner you better outcomes."

Restructuring Minnesota's child protection system was one of the main subjects of discussion at Thursday's meeting of the Legislative Task Force on Child Protection, which met for the second time in two months to address widespread failures identified in a recent Star Tribune investigation.

https://www.startribune.com/as-minnesota-considers-child-protection-reforms-should-responsibility-fall-to-state-or-counties/600334247/