At the Tuesday, April 8 county board meeting, the Dakota County Commissioners declared the week of April 7-13 to be National Public Health Week and the month of April as a whole to be Child Abuse Prevention Month.
The board heard from Children and Family Services Director Nikki Conway and Children and Family Services Deputy Director Lawrence Dickens on the work of Dakota County on preventing child abuse. While the number of overall alleged child victims is down from last year along with family assessments/investigations completed, the number of families that participated in case management and children experiencing out-of-home placement rose in 2024.
Despite a downtick in overall cases, Dickens noted that the complexity of cases has increased since the pandemic, leading to more work.
Conway highlighted the Parent Support Outreach Program (PSOP) which works with parents of children under 10 with support and community resources. The overall goal of the program, however, is simply to prevent child protection involvement in the future, said Conway.
Racial disparities in out-of-home placement, and the over-representation of certain races/ethnicities within various programs in Dakota County is another point of focus. The metric used by Conway and Dickens at the meeting was not percentage of participation in any given program, but children per 1,000.
For example, in the PSOP, while American Indian/Alaska Native children represent only 3% of the total population within the program, due to the relatively small size of that population in Dakota County when compared to other groups, that number translates to 12.4 children per 1,000, a rate nearly seven times higher than that of white children.
Using children per 1,000 as a metric, one can better compare rates between groups.
“This data tells us the story of eliminating racial disparities,” said Dickens.
A long-term goal of the county has been the creation of a one-stop-shop community resource center that would partner with local organizations in order to provide visitors with a comprehensive guide to resources in the county. “That’s what a community resource center is all about: one-stop shop means one-stop shop,” said Conway.
Given the large cuts at the state and federal level, especially to public health, much of that work could be threatened.
At the General Government and Policy Committee of the Whole meeting that followed, Dakota County’s state lobbyist Director of Government Relations at Stinson LLP Dan Dwight, spoke to the cuts coming into focus in St. Paul saying. “unsurprising they are starting look at cuts […] mostly to health and human services.”
“Everything is sort of on the table for funding with funding cuts,” said Commissioner Laurie Halverson.
“I was grateful this fell at this time frankly,” said Conway speaking to the ability to showcase the work done at Family Services even as cuts might be coming to it.
That same point was echoed by Deputy Public Health Directors Tracy Howard and Gina Pistulka. Efficiency was key to their presentation on National Public Health Week, explaining how many of the dollars spent on programs regarding public health have immense downstream payoffs.
Every dollar spent on mental health provided a return on investment of $6. For seatbelts and car seat programs, the return on investment is $29, for sleep initiatives $4, for vaccines for children $11, and for community weight loss programs $17.
“It is efficient,” said Pistulka.
The pair highlighted some of the work done in 2024 by Dakota County Public Health including providing some 4,400 vaccines, distributing 1,000 radon kits, and meeting with 9,200 community members during and after pregnancy.
Like the presentation preceding it, cuts are very well coming to Dakota County Public Health.
When it came to future cuts “I want you to know, we know,” said Halverson.