Lots of conversations with parents, brothers, sisters and caregivers. Emergency funds for extra beds, car seats or strollers. Overnight visits.
This is a snapshot of Hennepin County’s approach to keeping children who have been removed from their homes connected to siblings. The county’s rate of keeping sibling groups together in foster care — 86% as of August — is consistent with recent statewide data but soars above national averages.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Director of Children and Family Services Kwesi Booker said. “We want to have the least disruption and minimize trauma as much as possible. And so you have a lifelong connection to your siblings — we are doing our best to keep those children together at all costs.”
Ensuring siblings are placed together, or that they stay in touch even when separated in foster care, is a longstanding concern in the state and nationwide. A recent report by Minnesota’s youth-led Foster Advocates identified sibling separation as one of the most traumatic aspects of entering foster care. The issue for many of the more than 5,800 kids in foster care here was raised again in August, when Minnesota’s Office of the Foster Youth Ombudsperson reported “a consistent lack of support for regular, ongoing contact with foster youths’ brothers and sisters, and poor notification of the state’s siblings bill of rights.
Statewide data obtained by The Imprint shows that 85% of children and youth in foster care were placed with at least one sibling in 2024.
Hennepin County’s data, in contrast with the data shared by the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families, only includes cases where all members of sibling groups remained together. Hennepin, the most populous of the state’s counties, reports that upwards of 86% of kids were placed with siblings.
In contrast, the nonprofit Casey Family Programs found in a 2020 national analysis that between 47% and 20% of children in foster care are placed with all of their siblings.
Separated siblings have a tougher time adjusting to new homes and bonding with their foster parents, due to worrying about their siblings, the U.S. Children’s Bureau reported. They are also less likely to find permanent homes and stability.
“Studies have found that placing siblings in the same foster home is associated with higher rates of reunification, adoption, and guardianship,” its 2019 brief states.
In an interview, Bao Vang, a Hennepin County program manager, said keeping siblings together is “embedded in our practice.”
The priority is shared by all the caseworkers who interact with the family, she added. At the onset of a Children and Family Services case, county workers will ask parents about relatives or close friends who can accommodate all of their children under a single roof. If that can’t happen, caseworkers use the county’s referral system to find a placement — specifically noting that the siblings should remain together.
“Is it going to ever be possible for us to get up to 100%? I don’t know — just because family dynamics are so different, and each family is so different. But I think it’s, in general, always our goal to be able to keep siblings together.”
— Bao Vang, Hennepin County program manager
In cases where children could be placed together, but a foster parent or kinship caregiver lacks resources, Hennepin County can chip in, distributing funds for additional beds, strollers or car seats.
Vang said county workers also hold meetings throughout the life of a child welfare case that focus on the relationship between siblings and reconnecting those who had been separated. These conversations take place in family group decision making meetings involving caseworkers, caregivers, supportive people in the child’s life and the children themselves. The meetings are voluntary, include snacks and provide an opportunity for family members to advocate for siblings to stay together and suggest ways that could happen. Caseworkers also meet separately to discuss the issue in sessions called “permanency huddles.”
Siblings who can’t be placed together can still have visits, and Vang said workers “try to make them as authentic as possible,” by having overnights with mom when possible. “We try to make it as natural as possible in a home setting or at birthday parties,” she said.
County manager Staci Brean described a family group meeting she attended a few years ago involving three kids under age 5 who had been separated and placed with different caregivers. During family meetings, caregivers coordinated plans to help with babysitting and transportation to day care that would allow the kids to be placed together. The group also discussed things like sleep routines for the toddlers and their developmental needs, she said.
“The family worked it out,” Brean said. “They were all supporting one another, and the kids got to be in the same relative home and eventually went home.”
Still, Vang pointed out that not all siblings can be placed together. It can be hard to find homes to accommodate large sibling groups — particularly after emergency removals, or a sibling could be placed in residential treatment, separating the group.
Other times, siblings might have to be separated if one has been accused of sexually abusing another, and placing them together, or even having visits, could be unsafe.
There are also cases of siblings acting aggressively. In those situations, Vang said, “We want to make sure that they’ve been able to be stabilized and get the support and help they need.”
Before these siblings can live together, she added, “We might start off with ensuring that the providers are aware or the adults in the room are aware, and know how to navigate or de-escalate if those situations do occur.”
In an interview, Misty Coonce, the state’s Ombudsperson for Foster Youth, acknowledgedHennepin County’s efforts, but said there is still work to be done to increase the number of siblings placed together. Entering foster care is traumatic enough, and losing a brother or sister can make the experience even more difficult.
“There’s just such deep loss of familiarity, deep loss of comfort, and loss of easy access to family and community and culture,” Coonce said. “Being separated from siblings just compounds that trauma — and then it also impacts the nature of that sibling relationship for a long time, sometimes for a lifetime.”
Coonce speaks from experience. When she was 8, she and her three sisters were moved to an adoptive home in the city of Hastings, and since taking office, she has pledged to aid in keeping more siblings like hers together.
‘Not really familiar’ anymore
A 26-year-old woman living in Minneapolis described the heartbreak of separation over two generations.
She entered foster care at kindergarten age and spent years in out-of-home placements in Nebraska and Minnesota, but was never placed with her brother, who is six years older. The woman shared her story but requested anonymity because her own children have since been taken into foster care and she does not want to attract further scrutiny.
Though they never had a perfect relationship, she described her brother as a “father figure” who mostly kept an eye out for her. She recalled him being excited that she could one day become an athlete. Now, as an adult with three kids, she said the series of separations has frayed their relationship.
“We’re not really familiar with each other,” she said. “He doesn’t talk about the nasties that he’s been through. Granted, I don’t really talk about my nasties either.”
After she aged out of foster care in Minnesota and became a mom, two of her own kids were removed from her home, and separated. She was later able to get custody of her kids, she said, but described how she felt watching the two get split up.
“I felt helpless for them,” she said. “I felt like my hands were behind my back. And life was just doing away with people that I created, and putting me back in the same kind of survival mode that I had to be in when I was in placement.”
Many states have laws to keep siblings in foster care connected. Under Minnesota’s 2018 Sibling Bill of Rights, children in foster care should be placed together, or in close proximity, in order for them to have “frequent and meaningful” contact. State law also requires that foster youth be notified of these rights.
In its review, however, the ombuds office found 56 foster youth living apart from siblings who had not been informed of their rights to contact. Many siblings had spent years apart.
Congress has had its eye on these issues as well.
The Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 requires states to make efforts to keep siblings in the same home or in contact, unless it is not in their best interest. And the 2018 Family First Prevention Services Act allows states to waive restrictions on the number of children who can be placed in one foster home, which helps keep larger sibling groups together.
In 2023, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska introduced the Protecting Sibling Relationships in Foster Care Act. The bill would fund five-year pilot programs in states to develop “specialized foster care programs designed specifically for groups of 3 or more siblings, sibling groups with a wide age range, and sibling groups with, or that include a youth with, complex needs.”
Grant recipients would be required to submit written reports on the number and size of the sibling groups served, the methods used to place them together and the outcomes of the placements.
Vang said Hennepin County will remain committed to these goals.
“Is it going to ever be possible for us to get up to 100%? I don’t know — just because family dynamics are so different, and each family is so different,” Vang said. “But I think it’s, in general, always our goal to be able to keep siblings together.”
