HF3380 Summary

• Amends Minnesota child welfare law to emphasize culturally appropriate services, family preservation efforts, and placement with relatives as priority options for children in need of protection or services.

• Expands the definition of "relative" to include individuals with significant relationships to the child or child's parents, not just blood/legal relations, and requires agencies to conduct comprehensive relative searches and engage relatives in case planning.

• Requires courts to review reasonable efforts to prevent placement and reunify families, with clear standards for when such efforts are not required based on specific circumstances including egregious harm, prior terminations, or futility.

• Modifies placement decision standards to require individualized determinations of children's needs and mandates consideration of relative and sibling placements before non-relative foster care, with documentation requirements for placement decisions.

• Updates adoption and permanent placement procedures to ensure relatives who respond to notice cannot be ruled out as placement options based solely on delayed responses, and allows relatives and foster parents to petition courts for adoptive placement consideration.