DCYF Updates

DCYF convened the Intergovernmental Advisory Committee to strengthen partnerships with counties and Tribal Nations, aligning services and investments for children, youth, and families in Minnesota. First met in November 2025.

Minnesota families who adopted children from foster care in the past year and those considering adopting foster children will have a chance to celebrate and learn more at an upcoming free event.

The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families has expanded efforts to engage, support, and work with relatives and kin of children under state or tribal guardianship. Contracted agencies assist with home study services for identified relatives and kin, including outreach to assist in the licensing application process. If a child is placed in a relative’s home, contracted agencies provide placement services until reunification or finalization. Relative Concurrent Permanency Planning focuses on children who enter foster care where caseworkers vigorously pursue family reunification while also developing alternative permanency plans, if safe reunification is not achievable within legal timelines. By planning concurrently early on, rather than sequentially, temporary foster care placements can be shortened, and children and youth can thrive in safe, stable, permanent 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.

Children of all ages need permanent, stable, loving families. In Minnesota, when county social services agencies place children in foster care and if courts ultimately terminate parents’ rights, children are committed to the guardianship of the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families. It is the responsibility of the department to work with counties, Tribes and private adoption agencies to find permanent families for these children. The department is determined to move children quickly into safe, nurturing adoptive families when they cannot be safely reunited with their birth families. In 2024, families adopted 673 Minnesota children from the foster care system.

The Department of Children, Families, and Youth (DCYF) is making updates to the Social Service Information System (SSIS) Time Entry and Contact/Activity tool. This system is an important tool that staff use to write case notes, track their time, and share important information.