Indian Child Welfare
Background
AAIA began its active involvement in Indian child welfare issues in 1967, based upon the request of tribal leaders and distraught parents and grandparents, and for many years was the only national organization active in confronting the crisis in Indian child welfare. Association studies in the 1970s revealed that Indian children were placed in foster care far more than non-Indian children. The rate of placement ranged from 2.4 times the non-Indian rate in New Mexico to 22.4 times the national rate in South Dakota. Moreover, the adoption rate was more than eight times that of non-Indians. These studies led Congress to invite AAIA to work with it to develop legislation to deal with this tragic situation where enormous numbers of Indian children were being removed from their families and tribal communities by overzealous and culturally-insensitive state workers. That legislation became the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA). ICWA has provided vital protections to Indian children, families and tribes during the last 28 years.
AAIA has continued its efforts to ensure appropriate implementation of the Indian Child Welfare Act through a variety of activities. These activities have included:
- Participation in a panel created by Council on Accreditation that is working to revise accreditation standard for public child welfare agencies.
- Serving as an expert resource for an HHS Children’s Bureau panel considering ways to improve federal reviews of state child welfare systems and state child welfare data collection efforts.
- Drafting a section of a Congressionally-mandated report on child abuse and neglect in Indian communities
- Providing Indian Child Welfare Act training to Idaho state court judges, attorneys and social workers, the Ohio Department of Human Services, on Indian Child Welfare Act New York State Office of Children and Family Services and adoption attorneys
- Working with an American Public Human Services Association task force looking at revisions to the Interstate Compact on Placement of Children (ICPC) functions, including whether Indian tribes should be able to take advantage of the ICPC, the Native American Rights Fund ICWA Work Group that is developing a manual on the Indian Child Welfare Act and the National Indian Child Welfare Association on an important project involving the use of tribally licensed foster homes by the State of Washington.
- Testifying at a Congressional oversight hearing on state child welfare systems
- Working on a number of legislative initiatives including a bill that would make tribal governments and foster care and adoptive placements made by tribal courts eligible for direct federal funding under the Title IV-E Foster Care and Adoption Assistance program, amendments to the Indian Family Violence and Child Protection Act addressing foster and adoptive home issues, amendments to the Indian Child Welfare Act, amendments to the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Act to increase funding for tribal programs and increase the number of eligible tribes for funding under that Act, and amendments to the ICPC that would allow tribal home studies to be used for the purpose of interstate placement. The latter two initiatives have both been enacted into law and in the case of the Safe and Stable Families legislation, the increase in the tribal allocation from 1-2% to 3% will increase funding to tribes for child welfare services by $40 million over the next 5 years.
- Filing amicus curiae briefs in important ICWA cases such as Doe v. Doe before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and In the Matter of Baby Boy C before the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division. Our involvement in the latter case was instrumental in obtaining an opinion from the appellate court rejecting a lower court decision that had held that it would be unconstitutional to apply ICWA to a child whose parent was estranged from her tribe.