Announcements and Upcoming Events

What’s new on the Supervisors’ Web Site?
New Resources:

Minnesota Child Welfare Practice Model DHS-5881 (PDF)
Child Welfare Data Dashboard

New or updated quality improvement tools available

Frequent, quality visits by caseworkers with children in foster care are essential to their safety and well-being at all ages. At each developmental stage, their needs change, and so does the focus of the visit. These nine brief videos each provide best-practice suggestions for different scenarios involving foster children:

• Caseworker Visits: Overview
• Visits with Infants and Toddlers
• Visiting Elementary-age Children
• Visits with Children Ages 10-12
• Visiting Youth Placed in Group Homes or Residential Facilities
• Preparing Foster Children for Visits with Birth Parents
• Caseworker Visits: Quality Visits
• Caseworker Visits: Building Stable Placements
• Caseworker Visits: Supporting Older Youth Transitioning to Independence
  

The Child Welfare Workload Study and Analytic Tool provides counties and tribes with a system for assessing staffing needs and examining the correlation between staff resources and the achievement of outcomes for children and families in the child welfare system.

Safety Practice Profiles Update and Pilot II Evaluation Report

The Minnesota Department of Human Services (department), Child Safety and Permanency Division, in conjunction with the Capacity Building Center for States, and members of the Safety Framework Advisory Committee, developed Safety Practice Profiles in 2019, a tool for defining safety-related interventions, including ineffective, foundational, and advanced practice behaviors across the life of a case. The goal of Safety Practice Profiles is to assist caseworkers and supervisors in assessing current skills, and to guide appropriate goal setting as they work to enhance practice skills. The department embarked on an implementation and evaluation plan in 2020 to identify outcomes regarding a series of three pilots designed to integrate and assess training and continuous quality improvement supports needed to implement Safety Practice Profiles statewide with fidelity to child protection practice. At this time, we would like to share our evaluation findings and considerations of the second of three Safety Practice Profile implementation pilots and accompanying evaluation plans.

At this time the department would like to share our evaluation findings and considerations of the second of three Safety Practice Profile implementation pilots and accompanying evaluation plans.

The purpose of this report is to provide a summary of evaluation findings regarding the second pilot, including:

• Impact of revisions made to the Safety Practice Profile (SPP) pilot implementation process following the initial pilot
• Usability and acceptability of the SPP as a reflection and coaching tool to guide and enhance caseworker practice
• Implementation lessons learned to inform future collaboration and statewide implementation planning.
  

Safety Practice Profiles Pilot II Evaluation Report (PDF)

The department is planning to implement a third pilot. During this pilot, efforts will be directed toward evaluating practice change in relationship to implementing Safety Practice Profiles in supervisor and workforce practice, serving as a rehearsal for future statewide implementation of Safety Practice Profiles across the child protection workforce. If you are interested in learning more about the Safety Practice Profiles and are interested in participating in the third pilot cohort please, contact Cerina Marlar at cerina.marlar@state.mn.us.