Adoption support: Working together to help families

The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families contracts with private child-placing agencies to provide adoption and adoption-related services to children under state guardianship or Tribal jurisdiction. Six private agencies work closely with county and Tribal social service agencies to place children with adoptive families or relative concurrent foster families. These partnerships maximize the strengths and resources of private agencies and county and Tribal social service agencies to ensure that children are placed in permanent homes, and that they and their families receive the support they need.  

Need for families 

Currently, of the 469 Minnesota children who need adoptive homes immediately: 

• Approximately 46% are siblings who need to be adopted together.
• Approximately 51% are between 12 and 18 years old
• 35% are white, 31% are two or more races, 25% are Black/African American, 6% are American Indian, 2% are Asian or Pacific Islander, and about 1% declined to provide race information or is unknown

Adoption services 

Private agencies under contract with the state provide adoption services to children under state guardianship and the families who hope to adopt them by:  

• Recruiting families to explore the possibility of adopting children under state guardianship
• Training and educating prospective adoptive parents about adoption
• Completing and updating adoption home studies
• Placing children in adoptive homes, and providing supports and services to both children and families throughout the adoption process
• Providing short-term, post-adoption case management services for adoptive families facing difficulties
• Providing child-specific recruitment activities for children who are difficult to place for adoption
• Providing innovative targeted child-specific recruitment services
• Providing innovative family-finding and relative-engagement services.

Relative Concurrent Permanency Planning services 

Private agencies under contract with the state provide services to foster children and the families who care for them by: 

• Training and educating prospective parents about relative concurrent permanency planning, reunification and adoption
• Placing children in relative concurrent foster homes, and providing supports and services to both children and families throughout the placement
• Assisting families through the adoption process if children cannot be safely reunified with their birth parents.

Private agency services 

Prospective parents may obtain services from the following agencies that contract with the department: 

Ampersand Families 

1751 County Rd. B West 
Roseville, MN 55113  
612-605-1904
www.ampersandfamilies.org
Ampersand Families contracts with the department to provide adoption and relative concurrent permanency planning services to families, innovative family-finding services and innovative targeted child-specific recruitment services.

Children’s Home Society of Minnesota 

• 1605 Eustis St. St. Paul, MN 55108-1798  
• 651-646-6393 or 800-952-9302
• chlss.org

Children’s Home Society of Minnesota operates in partnership with Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota, and contracts with the department to provide adoption and relative concurrent permanency planning services and innovative family-finding services.

EVOLVE Family Services  

• 5850 Omaha Ave. N. Oak Park Heights, MN 55082
• 651-439-2446 evolveservices.org

EVOLVE Family Services, which has multiple locations, contracts with the department to provide adoption services and relative concurrent permanency planning services to families.