Last year, at least 20 Minnesota children died after being abused or neglected by their caregivers, yet little is known about the circumstances surrounding their deaths.
On July 1, a new law will go into effect requiring the state to create a statewide child fatality and near fatality review panel. Its mission will be to improve child safety by shedding new light on maltreatment tragedies and recommending reforms in statute, rule, policy, and procedure.
The review panel will bring together frontline professionals and state commissioners to review child fatality and near fatality cases where the family was involved with Child Protective Services (CPS) prior to the death, along with any other cases identified by the Governor or the panel itself.
Importantly, beginning in December 2026, the review panel will publish a report on child mortality– the number of critical incidents reported, important patterns and trends, and recommendations for improvement.
We at Safe Passage have been calling for more transparency in child fatality reporting for years– it was one of our legislative goals for this session. Historically, Safe Passage has had to rely on the media to identify children for our fatality reports. This year, we were able to get a head start using a database produced by Lives Cut Short. Even with that resource, it has been a monumental task for our research team to get information about the known children. At both the state and county level, data requests can take months to be fulfilled.
The state of Minnesota must become more transparent about the maltreatment deaths of children. As of today, Safe Passage’s 2023-2024 report will cover 46 children who died over an 18-month period. However, we have only been able to identify 37 of them by name. We know that there are other children who died at the hands of people who were supposed to protect them.
Although a review panel is a step in the right direction, greater transparency remains key to future reforms.