MINNESOTA
Star Tribune
By Chris Serres Star Tribune
APRIL 14, 2018
Spurred by recent breakdowns in Minnesota’s child protection system, legislators are pushing a project to train hundreds of workers each year on new methods for detecting and preventing child abuse.
The ambitious proposal would create the state’s first standardized curriculum and certification process for child protection workers and would correct what many child welfare advocates see as a long-standing gap in Minnesota’s decentralized system for protecting vulnerable children from maltreatment.
Proponents hope the enhanced training will help counties and Indian tribes increasingly overwhelmed by a flood of new child abuse and neglect cases in families ravaged by the opioid crisis. They also see it as a powerful tool for strengthening the front-line response to child maltreatment and preventing the sort of appalling violence and neglect that law enforcement officials recently discovered at a family’s house in south Minneapolis, which prosecutors have described as a “house of horrors.”
For a period of years, two girls with developmental disabilities were allegedly raped, beaten with bats and chained for days at a time without food by their father. Court records indicate that as far back as 2013, Hennepin County child protection workers knew of possible abuse of the twin girls, now 21, but did not remove the children from the home. The county’s handling of the case is now under review and has triggered calls for enhanced training for child welfare workers — a key recommendation of a 2015 task force appointed by Gov. Mark Dayton.
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