At this past Tuesday’s work session meeting of the Red-wood County board, the commissioners sat down with Red-wood County Fifth District judge David Peterson and Redwood County attorney Patrick Rohland to discuss everything from out of home placements to electronic home monitoring and how these issues impact the county budget.
The meeting was also an informational get together for newly elected commissioners Lon Walling and Gary Dahms, who felt they needed to be brought up to speed on how the courts interact with departments, such as human services, probation and the sheriff’s department.
Currently, Redwood County is spending nearly $1 million a year for out of home placements.
Rohland told the commissioners each day there are two to three calls to either the sheriff’s department or to human services reporting a case of child neglect, abuse or other problem.
“If the report gets screened in, there are two ways it can dealt with,” Rohland told the commissioners. “There is the traditional (method), which is to launch a formal investigation, and then there is the non-traditional way of dealing with it. The non-traditional (method) is to sit down with the family, work with them and perform an assessment.”