(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to Prairie Pulse.

Coming up a little bit later in the show, we'll meet Northwest Angle explorer, Joe Laurin but first our guest today is here to talk about Child Abuse Prevention Month, which is in April and let's welcome Quinn Jaeger, the Clay County Social Services supervisor in Moorhead, Minnesota.

Quinn, thanks for joining us today.

- Thanks for having me.

- As we get started, tell the folks a little bit about yourself and maybe your background, where you're from.

- Sure, I grew up in North Fargo, graduated from Fargo North High School.

I'm Spartan.

I attended college at MSUM over in Moorhead where I got a Bachelor of Social Work degree.

I've been with Clay County since 2016.

I did investigations there for a few years and then took the supervisor position.

- What got you interested in doing this kind of work?

- A joke that my mom is a social worker, so from a very young age, I feel she was planting seeds in my brain to make me a social worker.

So, when I got to college I kinda realized that that was the goal, that was the dream to help people.

And that's how I got started.

- Well, you're here to talk about of course, April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.

When did it start and why?

- It started in the eighties and it was designed to create awareness for child abuse that was occurring in not only our community, but everywhere in the United States.

- Yeah.

What is sort of the plan for this month or you know, for April, for the observance?

Do you do anything really special or just outreach or what are you doing?

- Yeah, I'm trying to do as much community outreach as possible.

I'm just, raise everyone in the community's awareness that child abuse and child neglect does occur.

Even when you think it doesn't happen in your community, it unfortunately does.

We just kinda wanna educate the community on what it is and what they can do to help reduce or stop it altogether.

- Yeah.

You know, do providers, do y'all do anything really different during the month to help with outreaching programs?

Or is it business as usual but just a little added in, you know, influence to it?

- Sure, sure.

The day-to-day services don't change in terms of how we're impacting and engaging with families throughout the community.

But we like to do different campaigns from year to year.

Some years, we've put, you know, blue ribbons up at the County building just to get people asking questions, what are those for?

You know, hanging them around trees.

We will rent a billboard that will kinda, you know advertise that it's Child Abuse Prevention Month in Clay County, typically right on the corner of 1st Avenue & 11th Street.

- What are ways people can be more aware maybe during the month.

You're gonna try to make them aware but then what can people do?

- Sure, I guess just ask questions.

You know, we have our child abuse website up on our Clay County website.

People can go there to get themselves educated on what abuse and neglect is, and they're always free to call us at our offices and ask any questions that they might have about what they're seeing with kids in the community.

- Yeah.

You know, well, we're gonna, obviously COVID comes into play for anything we talk about, it seems like here on Prairie Pulse, but you know, what's your job been like during the COVID months?

It's been a year now - [Quinn Jaeger] Yeah.

- Basically in fact we tried to do an interview last year about this time and we missed out because of COVID, but so how has it changed or what's been going on in terms of investigating child abuse or neglect?

- Sure.

Luckily, our staff have had some exemptions in terms of our statutory requirements of what we need to do when we open cases.

However, a lot of cases, my investigators want to get out into the homes, get out into the community and make sure that kids are safe.

So, what I mean when I say exemptions is prior to the COVID pandemic, we weren't able to use things like technology in order to assess for safety.

We weren't able to use a zoom call or a teams meeting.

We are able to do that now in some circumstances but if the reported concern is particularly dangerous for a child, we are still getting out there face to face, knocking on the family's door saying, "Hey can you kind of tell us what's going on here?"

So COVID definitely has impacted us, but the good news is that my investigators don't like to use that exemption.

You know, we take all the necessary safety precautions.

We have our masks on, we maintain social distancing when we're able to, but still they want to get out into the homes and make sure that kids are safe.

- You know, has your office seen an increase in cases due to COVID?

I guess I wanna say, but with COVID in play.

- Sure, our overall numbers for calls have decreased.

That has a lot to do with the fact that kids weren't in school in person for quite a significant amount of time.

However, the cases that we've seen are more severe.

They're more significant.

It just seems like everybody is struggling.

All the families out there are really struggling to deal with the impacts of COVID.

So, the overall numbers have decreased but the severity of what we've seen has increased.

- Well, then what I just heard you say then, with kids going back to school full time, are you seeing cases increase?

'Cause now I'm putting an assumption there that teachers and counselors recognize it.

And so, am I correct in what I'm saying?

- You are correct.

The numbers are ticking back up now that kids are back in person, you know.

Most of the time kids have a very strong support person in someone that they communicate with at the school, typically their teacher, school social worker, school counselor.

With kids being back in person and having those providers be able to have face-to-face contact with the kids.

We are seeing that the teachers and school social workers are hearing about things that are happening at home that would constitute abuse and neglect.

- With that said, what exactly is the definition of child abuse?

- Sure.

Kind of a loaded question but I'll do my best.

So, you know, abuse is defined by statute as unreasonable or excessive discipline.

That's physical abuse.

There are also many different categories of what we refer to as maltreatment, you know?

So when you say abuse, we just refer to it as overall maltreatment, that kind of incorporates all abuse and neglectful behavior.

There's many different types of abuse and of neglect.

So it really depends.

I could take the whole interview explaining each and every allegation that exists, but ultimately it's a standard that's defined by statute.

So, it's not like, you know, you or I could just look at a situation and say, "I don't like how that particular person is parenting."

It's gotta meet a statutory threshold.

- Who determines that, is there any gray area I guess in that, is it hard to determine sometimes?

- Absolutely.

You know, making that determination on whether or not our Clay County social workers, are gonna have an intervention with the family, is most often the most gray decision that we make, every single day.

We have our, you know, state statute that's you know, passed by the legislature.

And then we also have the Minnesota Department of Human Services, that gives us what we call screening guidelines.

They kind of expand on what abuse and neglect is and provide different examples as to what would be acceptable versus not acceptable behavior.

So, we're taking the reports that the community makes and we're kind of comparing the information in those reports with those guidelines and trying to make that determination, is that above or below that threshold?

- Well, if an investigator suspects child abuse or you've been informed, what's sort of the next steps?

- Sure.

So, it depends on our response.

We have what's called a family investigation which is generally considered your, more traditional child protection response.

We have 24 hours to lay eyes on the child and their immediate caregivers to make sure that they're safe right now in this moment.

We also have what's called a family assessment, which is still significant.

I mean, it's an allegation that met the criteria for a response and we have 120 hours to physically see the child and assess for their immediate safety.

So, once we've done that, we will, you know, speak to the caregivers of the child, whether that's mom and dad, whether that's grandma, grandpa, an uncle and aunt somebody else.

And kind of just say, "What is happening in the family right now?

Tell us everything that you can."

We try to stay as strengths-based as possible.

It's really easy to just go out and judge someone's parenting, but it's a lot harder to say, you know, you are doing something well and that's what we wanna identify, and that's what we want to build off of.

- Now you said you were an investigator.

Does that help you in your supervision job?

- Oh, absolutely.

Yep.

The fact that I have done the cases that, my staff are going out to do is extremely helpful.

- Yeah.

You talked, you mentioned a little bit about it, but you know, are there certain legal steps that have to be taken?

- Yes, absolutely.

Every report that we receive is also cross reported to law enforcement.

Oftentimes when child abuse or child neglect happens, a crime was also committed.

So, we will work a joint investigation together with our law enforcement partners, basically so that kids and families don't have to tell their story more than once.

It would be quite terrible if a child has to disclose an abusive or neglectful situation to a law enforcement officer, and then the next day have the social worker come knock on the door and say, "Hey, tell me everything that you just told that law enforcement officer yesterday."

So, we work these cases jointly so that the families can be impacted as little as possible.

- Well, with that, what's a mandated reporter?

- Sure.

A mandated reporter is anyone that's typically in a helping profession that due to their typically code of ethics, they are required by law to report abuse and neglect.

- Would that be like a medical field or?

- Typically that's gonna be anyone in the medical field to include nursing home staff, anyone at the schools, basically any helping profession.

- And when we talked child abuse, what ages do you, are you working with?

- All children.

So, you know infants, even we will work with, moms that are pregnant sometimes, given particular circumstances all the way up to 17 year olds.

- Okay.

You know, this question that you know, do parents ever get their children back after they're taken away from an abusive situation?

- Oh, absolutely.

I think one of the common misconceptions out there is that, you know, child protection knocks on your door and the child leaves with us and that's actually not the case.

The overwhelming majority of cases that we work, the children remain in the home with their parents.

One of the things that I like to tell everyone about child protection is that the social worker, doesn't actually have the legal ability to remove children.

Law enforcement has that ability and a judge has that ability via a court order.

So, even if we wanted to, we couldn't just show up at somebody's door and say, "Hey the kids are coming with me today."

- So, are there obviously situations where you go with law enforcement when it escalates to a level, that that has to be done?

Is that the way it happened?

- Yep, absolutely.

Yep.

Sometimes law enforcement will get a call that a particularly bad situation is occurring.

They might respond immediately to make sure that everyone there is safe, and then we are sometimes their very next call.

- What factors do drug and alcohol play in child abuse or children living in abusive situations?

- Unfortunately, that's probably the biggest thing that we're dealing with right now, is drug and alcohol use.

You always wanna think that it's not happening in your community.

I know prior to entering the child protection field myself, I said, "Oh, this is not happening."

And in my town, that would be somewhere else, and then you really get your eyes open to, it does kind of permeate every level of our society, every socioeconomic status, there are people that struggle with addiction and that oftentimes leads to negative impacts on their parenting.

- Yeah.

But you know, again, when you investigate it, you know, how hard is it to, you know, maybe as you talked about they don't like somebody's parenting, versus are they really abusive?

- Exactly.

How do you really determine that?

- Exactly.

We try to look at the impact of the child, you know, so we know what it takes to raise children successfully.

They need attention, they need to be loved, they need food, they need clothing, they need shelter.

You know, we look at those base level things, obviously that's the immediate safety part of it.

But then we also have to keep in mind the wellbeing of the children, you know.

What does that attachment look like with their parents?

How do the parents engage with them?

You know, are they playing with a little child on the floor that wants some attention from mom and dad?

We're trying to get our best assessment of what that looks like, especially when it comes to things like, you know drug and alcohol use.

You know, I like to use the example of everybody has a couple beers during a Sunday Vikings game, right?

Child Protection is probably not gonna come knocking on your door because maybe you had a couple extra beers, too many on a Sunday.

We don't look at the fact that the substance use is occurring, we look at how that substance use is impacting the parenting of the child and if there are any impacts that we can see.

- Does that require multiple visits or?

(incoherent mumbling) - Yeah, absolutely.

You know, so, I said, "Initially," you know, "We're gonna get out within 24 hours or within 120 hours of a case being open.

We're gonna assess for that immediate safety of the child."

But it's, but that's isn't where it ends.

You know, from there, we're gonna wanna, kinda identify who are the support systems, that the family has in place, you know.

Are there relatives that we can kind of tap into?

What are we really worried about?

You know, oftentimes we'll get a report, you know, for neglectful behavior and we go talk to a family and that's not something we're worried about at all.

It might be something completely different.

So, we try to tap into the existing support networks of families, to really kinda bring a village around a child because that's what it takes.

- You know, it's one thing to get a report, I guess, from a healthcare provider or a school counselor.

But what happens when a neighbor somehow gets involved and decides they didn't like what they saw and they contact you.

I mean, I assume you treat every case seriously but so, how do you follow up on those types of things?

- Yep, so, we accept reports from everyone in the community.

You don't have to be a mandated reporter to make a child maltreatment report.

You just have to be a concerned citizen.

We really require or request that everyone call us, if they're concerned for the safety or well-being of a child.

Our guidelines that I spoke about earlier, they don't even allow us to take the credibility of a reporter into consideration, when we're trying to determine, does this report meet criteria or not?

We consider that really good for child safety but then it also becomes really frustrating, from a family side of things.

- I could see that too.

How important are foster parents in this whole scenario?

- Absolutely vital.

Without foster parents, I think our entire system would collapse on itself.

You know, oftentimes when children do have to go into custody, if they do have to be removed from moms and dads, we're gonna be calling those foster parents right away.

These kids need a safe and stable environment, and it's really the foster parents that are able to provide that for them.

We try our best to reach out to family members.

You know, if moms and dads can't take care of kids, we want their family to take care of kids.

So we'll traditionally, you know, reach out to any family that exists in the area and say, "Hey this is kind of the situation, the child did go into foster care, but we would like to, what we call emergency relative license you to be the foster care provider."

So the child doesn't have to go to a stranger's home or someone they've never met before.

But without foster parents, we couldn't do what we do.

- Yeah.

Well, when you place a child with foster parents, how does that work?

And you know, is it for a night?

Is it for a week?

Yeah, what is- - Sure, we have what's called an on-call home.

So, for like the middle of the night calls, when we're really not expecting anything to happen, we have a home that's ready to go, that can take kids at any point in time.

I feel our on-call home should be sainted, for the service they provide to the children in our community.

But essentially we don't know.

We don't know if we're going to be able to get the children back to their parents right away or if it's going to be more long-term.

- Yeah.

What about, you know, discuss how the public views of child abuse have changed over the decades here?

- Oh, absolutely.

We will often reference this kinda in our office of, well, when we grew up, it was like this and when, we grew up, we did that.

So, I think the community standards definitely have changed over time, and I think they've changed in a way that ultimately are there to make kids more safe, but we do get into a lot of kinda generational conversations, as to what's acceptable parenting practices.

Typically that happens the most around supervision.

You know, what's okay for, is it okay for a kid to go play outside across the street at the park, without a parent present?

You know, and at what age are they able to do that?

I think that's where we get into the generational differences the most.

- Well, and you say things have changed over the decades, is spanking considered child abuse?

- Well, that depends.

In the state of Minnesota, you can use corporal punishment, you can spank your child.

What we're really looking for is, was the action excessive or unreasonable?

We would consider an action excessive or unreasonable if it left a mark, if it left a bruise, if there was an injury as a result of that.

I like to say, I would often ask if parenting works for you or if spanking works for you in terms of your parenting, then great.

But I would just question, is there another more effective way that potentially we could help you understand or help you use better that doesn't involve, you know, physically striking a child, Just because there's always a risk that you don't intend to leave a mark or a bruise and it happens accidentally, and that is enough to warrant, a Child Protection Response sometimes.

- Yeah, 'cause even a spat on the hand when they're reaching for a burning stove.

- [Quinn Jaeger] Absolutely.

- Yeah, or you know, or things that you wonder, can you do.

Is your job difficult at times?

- Oh, absolutely.

I'd say it's difficult most times.

- So what's the most rewarding thing about your job?

- I think in general, you know, when I got into the work, you know, I believe a lot of families out there or community members in general, would just, you know, call us baby snatchers.

That was one of the things I heard, you know, completing investigations myself and believe it or not, that's the worst part of our job, is when we actually have to remove children.

So my favorite part of the job, is when we work a case successfully where we don't have to remove the children.

Where we're able to keep kids safe and keep them in the homes with moms and dads because we know kids do best when they're with their moms and dads.

- Yeah.

So, what do you hope, April, Child Abuse Prevention Month, will do for everybody out there?

- I hope that just the community in general is able to just kind of recognize, keep an eye out for kids that they care about and keep an eye out for kids that they see out in the community.

You know, if they think that something abusive or neglectful is happening, I hope that they remember, that it's Child Abuse Prevention Month and to give us a call.

I think oftentimes people think I can only call, if I have something to report.

That's not true.

Give us a call if you have questions, if you don't know what to report because we'd love to provide the community with any education to make everyone in the community as aware as possible so that all the kids in our community can be safe.

- Yeah, with that said if people want more information, where can they go?

- Our website's a great place, claycountymn.gov.

Otherwise you could call our Child Intake Line, 218-299-7139 - Well Quinn we're out of time, but thanks so much for joining us today.

- Thank you for having me.

- Stay tuned for more.

(upbeat music) - Though it's frequently touted as a fishing destination, Minnesota's Northwest Angle is so much more.

It's an area rich with history, spectacular views and oddities.

Joe Laurin shares over 20 years of experience, exploring and researching this magnificent place.

(serene music) - People think a Lake in the Woods is a fishing lake.

It's sure a lot more than that.

(serene music) 14,000 islands on the Lake.

It's just amazing.

Some of the stuff that no one's ever seen.

(upbeat music) My wife, Anita and I have been coming out to the Northwest Angle for 20 years and she's a real outdoor person.

And we kinda have complimenting interests where, she loves to fish and I love to explore.

I'll just exploring things from old maps, old newspaper articles, there's anything I could find.

(upbeat music) Over the years, 20 some years of exploring, I've had all this information.

You know, over time I thought why not share everything and let other people enjoy it.

So I created a Lake of the Woods exploring app.

If they wanna see gold mines, if they wanna see cool waterfalls, if they wanna see good shore lunch spots or they wanna find good fishing spots, there was one place to go and it kinda added another dimension to people's vacation.

Each year I build on it.

Probably have about 300 places to see in Lake of the Woods before I'm near complete.

(bird chirping) When you have over 50 gold mines on the Lake and there's you know, so much there, you know, between the shafts and what they left behind and the elevators.

Even some of them, when you look in the rock, you could still see the gold specks where, yep, that's what they were interested in.

And just all the work that had to be going through to put a hole in a rock just 10 feet.

I can't imagine, you know, all the labor that went into that to create that, but it's, the mines are definitely quite interesting.

There's so many of them.

(upbeat music) So there are three SunSweeps have been created by David John Barr.

He's a artist from Michigan and what he wanted to do was he wanted to bookend, each side of the border between the United States and Canada.

So he created a SunSweep in the state of Washington.

One on Lake of the Woods, and then one in Maine.

On the first day of summer, you'll actually see a reflection of the sun on the stone and it follows the contour of the artwork.

I know several different groups go out on the first day of summer and check them out.

It's a pretty neat artwork.

(waves whooshing) Chiro beach is very special.

It has stones that have holes in the center that basically look like a cheerio.

(water swooshing) No one really knows how they're formed and a lot of people like to go there and create necklaces and bracelets.

And it's a, it's kind of a cool place to visit.

And you can never really leave there in less than a half hour because you find so many interesting things.

that's pretty fun to go check out.

(upbeat music) A lot of people would come up to the Northwest Angle and try to take a picture.

Oftentimes the picture was next to a road sign or something that really wasn't meaningful.

So, local group got together and looked at different options.

And one of the things they looked at was the Key West bouy.

Key West has a buoy, that kind of symbolizes the most Southern spot of the U.S so that, the kind of the idea was, have a similar buoy up in the Northern parts.

The people that come up to the Angle just to take a picture of the most Northern spot, that seems to be the best place to take the pictures from what we've had in the past.

(upbeat music) The Native Americans have a lot of history on Lake of the Woods.

For instance, a lot of the petroglyphs that were created hundreds of years ago, are still symbolic where the different groups will go there and they'll leave offerings such as a coin, tobacco, different things to honor the legacy they had.

(upbeat music) What was the message back then that they were trying to send with a different, you know, bird symbols, maybe a medicine man, hand prints.

And there's some like, even the pictographs in my app, I'll look at ones called the long journey.

It's just, it shows a man in a squiggly line and you look at Lake of the Woods and how you really can't go straight because of so many islands.

And does that mean the long journey or what did that mean?

So everyone kind of has their own interpretation.

And I think that's what's kind of fun about the pictographs 'cause it's a language people don't understand and you look at it and you're saying, "Boy, what does that mean to me?"

(upbeat music) People up here wanna do something different besides fishing and, you know, add a little variety to the vacation.

(upbeat music) - Well, that's all we have on Prairie Pulse for this week.

And as always, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.