When it comes to the safety of the community’s children, there are quite a few boots on the ground in Albert Lea.

One pair of those boots belongs to detective Julie Kohl, who has been working with the Albert Lea Police Department for close to 16 years. She started working with juvenile cases and continues to do so, with a gap in between due to some responsibility shifts between the county and city law enforcement regarding child protection case investigations. Now, child abuse or neglect cases in the city are investigated by the city and Child Protection in Family Services.

During that time, Kohl said the amount of cases she investigates has remained steady.

“The caseload has not gotten any lighter,” she said. “There’s always been a lot of child protection in the city of Albert Lea because we are the largest municipality in the county.”

Kohl said the police department will receive reports through the school system, daycares, from hospitals, family members or acquaintances with concerns. There is a screening meeting at the Department of Human Services on a daily basis, Kohl said.

While she said she is not necessarily working a case every day, they are coming in steadily. Among those cases, Kohl said she has seen a rise in cases involving substance abuse.

“I have seen a real rise in reports of parents using drugs around their children or reports of parents possibly providing drugs for their children,” Kohl said. “Those are really difficult cases to investigate because nobody is telling you the truth.”

When Assistant County Attorney Erin O’Brien started her short list of case types she sees most often in the area, she listed neglect due to parental use of controlled substance first.

“It is an unusual case where controlled substances and the use by parents is not an issue,” O’Brien said.

According to O’Brien, this is not a problem specific to Albert Lea; she has heard from her peers that chemical dependency is posing a problem for children’s well-being in other areas, but the substances in question may be different. In Albert Lea, O’Brien said, she notices methamphetamines. She also said chemical dependencies can make cases more difficult because it affects the stability of the parent.

O’Brien is one of two at the county attorney’s office working on child protection cases, which she said also include truancies, runaways and children involved in prostitution and trafficking. It’s not all she does, but it is a lot of her job.

“I would say child protection takes up the majority of my time,” O’Brien said.

Some of that is due to a shift in what gets investigated and an increase in the type of cases being assessed by the county attorney’s office due to recommendations adopted from the Minnesota governor’s Task Force on the Protection of Children. The Minnesota Supreme Court’s Children’s Justice Initiative also plays a role in how and what the assistant county attorney is doing in relation to child protection work.

O’Brien said she is also spending a good chunk of time working with the Department of Human Services and law enforcement, helping them proceed and has greater involvement in post-court work than earlier (a trend O’Brien said is also statewide).

Child protection is broad, and it’s complicated, O’Brien said.

Kohl and O’Brien make up just a portion of those in the city and county working to combat child abuse and neglect. Just one door down from the county attorney’s office is the Guardian ad Litem office, which also works within the court system dealing with cases of child abuse and neglect. Perhaps one of the biggest players is Family Services in the Department of Human Services.

“There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes than people realize,” said Department of Human Services mental health case manager Sara Barnes of the work her coworkers do with child protection. Barnes is the president-elect of the Albert Lea Exchange Club, who erected a banner last year in New Denmark Park in support of child abuse prevention. The club is still looking for a place to display its banner this year.

Also in the mix are Freeborn County Public Health, the Healthy Families program, Early Childhood program and school social workers — all of whom, together, are cogs in the wheel that aims to drive toward positive change for children’s safety in the community.

“The bottom line is … we’re trying to help kids be safe with their parents and for them to be successful,” O’Brien said.

Kohl also stressed the importance of looking out for the community’s children.

“We need to treat our children as a valuable commodity,” Kohl said. “They’re our next generation. They’re going to be who we make them.”