Descriptive Analysis of the Parent Support Outreach Program (PSOP)
Minnesota’s Parent Support Outreach Program (PSOP) is a voluntary, short-term, early intervention program that aims to prevent child abuse and neglect and promote family wellbeing by providing case management and financial supports to high-risk families. The program was first piloted in 2005, then expanded statewide in 2013. PSOP is an important investment of our child welfare prevention infrastructure, and ongoing evaluation is vital to ensure it is delivering the outcomes we expect. This report draws on administrative and survey data to provide a descriptive analysis of PSOP implementation and participant characteristics. It offers a snapshot of how the program operates and the journey of participants, and how that varies across geography and populations. Importantly, this descriptive analysis is not designed to make claims of cause and effect. The findings in this report should be interpreted as a description of PSOP participants and their experiences.
Key Takeaways
- From 2013 to 2025, PSOP helped over 76,000 people in over 25,000 cases, with the number of families served growing steadily each year.
- Most families receiving PSOP services (61%) did not have any further child welfare involvement during the year after they started PSOP and very few families (3%) had a maltreatment determination.
- In counties where PSOP services were contracted out, fewer families were subsequently involved in child welfare reporting and investigation. Counties that contract PSOP services, however, may be different in important ways than counties that choose not to contract.
- Families receiving more intensive PSOP services—such as payments, connections to public benefits, or longer case management—had higher rates of child welfare involvement in the following year. These families may experience both a greater objective need for child welfare involvement and increased contact with state systems, which can result in more intensive monitoring. • PSOP families with greater financial needs, indicated by PSOP service use and public benefit connections, experienced more subsequent child welfare involvement.
We organize our findings, linked below, in two parts: (1) characteristics of PSOP service delivery—including models of support, service duration, and use of flexible funds—and (2) characteristics of the households participating in the program. While descriptive in nature, these findings can help inform policy and practice, especially around the journey of families in PSOP and the broader child welfare system. That said, further qualitative and quantitative analyses are needed to explore the program's causal impact for vulnerable families. The report ends by detailing pressing questions that may be answered by subsequent analysis.