Voices & Choices Minnesota

Category: Latest News & Events

  • DCYF Structural Change: V&C Secures Equity Monitoring on Intergovernmental Advisory Committee

    In a major development for Minnesota’s early childhood landscape, the state has moved forward with the creation of the new Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), centralizing services previously housed in DHS and MDE. This is a massive structural change, and the Voices & Choices for Children Coalition has been actively monitoring the transition to ensure equity remains the top priority.

    V&C recognizes that while centralization offers the promise of efficiency, it also carries the risk of diluting the specific focus on racial equity. That is why we are committed to influencing the culture of this new agency. We are proud to announce that the legislation establishing the DCYF includes the Children, Youth, and Families Intergovernmental Advisory Committee, a body designed to advise the new commissioner.

    Our coalition is embedded in these processes, leveraging our “inside game” of administrative advising to ensure that all future policies developed and implemented by DCYF uphold our standard: that one’s racial identity no longer predicts, in a statistical sense, how one fares in society. The transition is funded by specific appropriations in the FY 2026-27 biennium, and V&C will continue to build bridges and advocate to guarantee that racial equity is at the forefront as resources are allocated.

  • The Ideological Pivot: Why Voices & Choices Rejects the “Deficit” Model of Advocacy

    Voices & Choices for Children MN emerged to address a systemic failure: the systematic exclusion of communities of color and American Indian nations from the policy-making tables. To effectively address this, we needed a new ideological grounding.

    Our coalition fundamentally rejects the common policy approach that frames disparities through a “deficit” lens—an approach that often focuses on what marginalized communities supposedly lack. This narrative relies on the dangerous assumption that the families of children who are not succeeding in standard systems have somehow “not prepared their children properly”.

    We adopted a powerful counter-narrative: the failure lies not in the families, but in the systems that perpetuate exclusion. The harm is caused by the “systemic devaluing, undermining, disadvantaging or marginalizing of their individual identities”.

    This ideological pivot—from focusing on “closing the gap” to affirming identity—is the intellectual engine driving our legislative agenda. It means we focus on creating new programs, like the Community Solutions Fund, that are designed to support and strengthen the assets already present within our communities.