Minnesota’s Round 4 Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) Program Improvement Plan (PIP) Approved

On September 24, 2026, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) approved Minnesota’s Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) Round 4 Program Improvement Plan (PIP). This approval marks an important milestone as Minnesota moves from PIP planning into implementation and begins putting the strategies and improvement activities outlined in the plan into action.

Through the PIP Pilot, Minnesota will have an opportunity to test new approaches, learn together about what works, and use what we learn to strengthen the child welfare system and improve outcomes for children, youth and families. The PIP focuses on three key areas:

• Improving outcomes for children with complex needs by strengthening coordination across the systems that serve children and families and partnering with local and/or state agencies to identify, implement and evaluate strategies that improve outcomes for children with complex needs.
• Reducing reentry into foster care by identifying and testing approaches that can better support children and families after they exit care.
• Improving father engagement by working with county and Tribal agencies to strengthen efforts to identify, locate and engage fathers and paternal relatives throughout the child welfare process.

This work will involve continued collaboration with families with lived experience, community organizations, Tribes, counties, courts and other partners. Some of the work will be tested through Innovation Zones, which will allow local communities to identify challenges, develop strategies and learn together about what works in their unique settings.

Thank you to everyone who contributed their time, expertise and feedback throughout the planning process. Your input has helped shape Minnesota’s PIP and will continue to be an important part of this work. We look forward to continuing to learn and work together to improve outcomes for children and families across Minnesota.

Stay Informed and get involved

Upcoming Webinar

Round 4 Child and Family Services Review (CFSR): Program Improvement Plan (PIP) Overview

Tuesday, November 17, 2026

10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Registration Link: Click Here

Overview:

Since receiving Minnesota’s Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) Round 4 final report in November 2025, we have worked to develop a Program Improvement Plan (PIP) to address identified strengths and opportunities for improvement across our child welfare system. Now that our PIP has been officially approved, this webinar will walk through the CFSR timeline, review the priorities and strategies outlined in the PIP, and discuss how progress will be measured. We will also explore opportunities for individuals with lived experience, community partners, Tribes, and counties to get involved in implementation as we move from planning to action.

Recommended Audience:

We welcome the participation of parents and individuals with lived experience, whose perspectives are vital to shaping meaningful and effective outcomes. All partners and collaborators in the child welfare, children’s mental health and developmental disabilities, and truancy communities are encouraged to participate in the event. This includes Tribal and County agency caseworkers, supervisors, and managers; CJI Team members; judicial officers; court administration staff; law clerks; county attorneys; social workers; attorneys for parents and children; guardians ad litem; and Tribal representatives.

Resources

ACF’s CFSR Technical Bulletin #14: A Home for Every Child Initiative

ACF’s A Home for Every Child Resource Page

ACF’s A Home for Every Child Innovation Challenge

ACF’s Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) Statewide Data Indicators Dashboard

Minnesota’s Child and Family Services Review Round 4: Program Improvement Plan Hub: This site includes updates and information about the PIP, resources to help you stay informed as implementation moves forward and will include ongoing opportunities for engagement as they arise. Please check the site often for updates and opportunities to share your feedback.

Questions

If you have questions or concerns, please contact the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) Child Safety and Permanency (CSP) Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Team at dcyf.csp.cfsr@state.mn.us.

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Effective June 29, 2026, the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) has officially opted into the federal Program Improvement Plan (PIP) Pilot offered by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). DCYF has also officially opted in to the A Home for Every Child Innovation Challenge offered by the ACF.

The PIP Pilot provides states with an opportunity to strengthen their continuous quality improvement (CQI) systems while meeting federal Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) requirements through a more collaborative and learning-focused approach. Minnesota believes this pilot is an important opportunity to build on existing improvement efforts and to position our state to meet federal expectations in a thoughtful and proactive way.

The A Home for Every Child Innovation Challenge is a prize competition intended to incentivize jurisdictions to achieve the highest rate of improvement in their foster home-to-child ratios within a single year. This challenge supports ACF's "A Home for Every Child" initiative, which aims to right-size the ratio of available foster homes to the number of children in the foster care system nationwide. The objective is to recognize and reward states that demonstrate exceptional progress in increasing available foster homes relative to children in care, thereby advancing the goal of having homes waiting for children rather than children waiting for homes. The intended effect is to accelerate state innovation in foster home recruitment, retention and system improvements that directly impact child welfare outcomes and permanency.

Before making this decision, DCYF took several steps to ensure Minnesota was prepared to participate in the pilot, including engaging partners, reviewing legal considerations and confirming operational readiness. Participating in the PIP Pilot provides several important opportunities for Minnesota:

• Strengthen alignment with federal Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) expectations
• Test and enhance Minnesota's qualitative case review process
• Identify practical ways to better support counties and Tribes in improving child welfare practice
• Build on existing continuous quality improvement efforts using data, collaboration and shared learning.

The pilot is designed to encourage innovation, continuous learning and partnership. As implementation moves forward, Minnesota will use this opportunity to test new approaches, learn what works and refine tools and processes before considering broader implementation. This work will also strengthen collaboration with partners across the child welfare system and support our shared commitment to improving outcomes for children, youth and families throughout Minnesota.

On our newly released Child and Family Services Review Round 4: Program Improvement Plan Hub, you can find updates and information about the pilot, ongoing opportunities for engagement and stay informed as implementation begins. Please check the site often for ongoing updates and opportunities to share your feedback.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed their time, expertise and feedback throughout this planning process. We look forward to continuing this work together.

Resources

ACF’s CFSR Technical Bulletin #14: A Home for Every Child Initiative

ACF’s A Home for Every Child Resource Page

ACF’s A Home for Every Child Innovation Challenge

ACF’s Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) Statewide Data Indicators Dashboard

Minnesota’s Child and Family Services Review Round 4: Program Improvement Plan Hub

Questions

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), Child Safety and Permanency (CSP) Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Team at dcyf.csp.cfsr@state.mn.us.

What we've accomplished

• Used data and feedback to assess PIP Pilot opportunity
  • Continued our internal PIP planning meetings and weekly meetings with our federal partners
  • Reviewed the information we have gathered over the past several years through our data collection and community engagement events to determine how well our current needs align with the new pilot requirements
  • Shared what we know about the PIP Pilot with our partners, including MACSSA and our court partners, to hear any feedback or concerns they had with taking the pilot opportunity
  • Combined what we knew from our continuous quality improvement (CQI) processes, including CFSR case reviews, qualitative coding analysis, community engagement event feedback, and ongoing data collection to identify themes across performance and practice throughout the state
  • Held a statewide webinar on June 16, 2026, to provide internal and external partners with the available information regarding the PIP Pilot opportunity and our progress toward making a decision.
    
    
• Designed Minnesota's PIP goals that reflect the experiences and priorities shared by families, partners and stakeholders using our CQI processes, including case reviews, data collection and insights from community engagement events:
  • Improve caseworker practice and accountability
  • Enhance family engagement, relationships and shared decision-making
  • Improve permanency planning and placement stability
  • Advance an equitable, prevention-focused and culturally responsive system.
• Developed strategies that focus on a limited number of well-conceived, outcome-based strategies to achieve our goals:
  • Prevention and family preservation
  • Reentry reduction
  • Father engagement.
    
    
• Officially opted in to the PIP Pilot and Innovation Challenge on 6/29/26.

What we're working on

• Continue to meet with internal and external partners to explore additional strategies that align with our goals
• Determine chaser measures related to each of our strategies for inclusion in our PIP (monthly reporting)
• Prepare and submit a proposed PIP document to our federal partners.

What's next

• Prevention and family preservation
  • Evaluating the information currently being collected to determine the best way to measure progress in providing prevention services and preventing entry into the foster care system.
    
    
• Reentry reduction
  • Collecting and organizing information from two prior re-entry projects (one through the courts and one through the state) to assess what information is available and what information needs to be collected
  • Assess areas around the state that do well with reentry rates and examine what is going well
  • Conduct a gap analysis regarding reentry to determine what information we are missing.
    
    
• Father engagement
  • Creating the structure of innovation zones, including planning focus groups, reaching out to pilot sites and creating training for those interested in participation
  • Conduct focus groups with individuals with lived experience and frontline staff in pilot site counties
  • Conduct CQI trainings for individuals with lived experience, county/Tribal staff and DCYF staff
  • Launch innovation zones in pilot county/Tribal agencies.