Anoka County innovates, saves child protection money

In 2008, Anoka County spent $5.3 million to place 607 kids outside their families because of family dysfunctions or safety concerns.

Last year, the county spent only $4.2 million because it had to place only 465 kids outside their homes.

What made the difference? A new philosophy of child protection centered less on the court system and more on the family and the safety of children, county officials will tell you. The resulting project was one of 13 winners in this year's local government innovation competition that the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute sponsors.

There were others -- a food drive in Eagan, a collaboration between Maplewood and North St. Paul to share park and recreation services, an innovative way Excelsior found to add downtown parking without using city money, for example. You can see them here.

But the Anoka County effort stands out for its success at saving significant dollars while improving services at the same time.

"It's not about the financial savings," said Cindy Cesare, manager of child and family services for the county. "That's a benefit, but kids are safer and able to remain with the family."

What the county did, after studying other counties and international research, was take money that had been going into out-of-home placement for kids in danger and use it instead to focus on keeping children safe in their own environment. Instead of focusing on monitoring and reporting to the court, child protection workers got more involved with families.

Family members check in more, parents have conversations about their strengths, kids are encouraged to think more about protecting their own safety and outside family members and even neighbors are brought into the conversation.

Even in an emergency, a county worker might quickly pull together relatives, neighbors and others to develop a way to keep an endangered child safe without thrusting him or her into the formal court system.

"It was more adversarial before," Cesare said. "Now it's more a partnership."

The entire dollar saving doesn't go straight to the bottom line because the project has costs -- resources devoted to family group decision-making, for example. And a state grant helped get the effort going, Cesare said.

But Anoka County's project is one of the "reaffirmations that people are doing innovative things" to reinvent local government processes in tough times, said Jay Kiedrowski, Humphrey Institute senior fellow and organizer of the competition.

This year's contest added the feature of putting nominated projects online at InCommons so the public could vote for efforts it liked. Those results constituted 20 percent of the final decision, Kiedrowski said.

For a more in depth look at broader trends in child protection and why case loads are dropping elsewhere, check out MPR News reporter Sasha Aslanian's piece from last November.

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