The Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) just released its 2016 Child Maltreatment Report.
This information is 1-2 years old, which limits its usefulness for program management and accountability.
Instead, the Department’s quarterly Dashboard Report should display basic metrics by county including:
- total maltreatment reports
- number screened in for service
- cases assigned to Family Assessment (FA) versus investigation
Delayed reporting also means the state and counties don’t get timely credit for improvements.For example sexual abuse cases misdirected to FA instead of being investigated dropped from 7.1% to 1.7%. Also, cases assigned to FA declined from 75% to 59% – far from the goal of 20%-25% low risk cases, but progress nonetheless.
DHS’ Tableau report-writing software should make it easy to share this information – and improve public perception of transparency.