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 worked throughout the years ensure appropriate implementation of the Indian Child Welfare Act through litigation, advocacy and training. We have collaborated with other Indian organizations, such as the National Congress of American Indians, and with non-Indian child welfare organizations such as the Children’s Defense Fund. Some of our more recent activities include:
- Providing Indian Child Welfare Act training to Idaho state court judges, attorneys and social workers, the Ohio Department of Human Services, the New York State Office of Children and Family Services and adoption attorneys
- Participation in a panel created by Council on Accreditation working to revise accreditation standard for public child welfare agencies to make them consistent with the ICWA.
- Working with the Native American Rights Fund ICWA Work Group that developed an Internet-based manual on the Indian Child Welfare Act and with the National Indian Child Welfare Association on an important project involving the use of tribally licensed foster homes by the State of Washington.
- 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.
Our work in this area is not limited to the Indian Child Welfare Act specifically. We work to improve the entire child welfare and juvenile justice systems to maximize positive outcomes for Indian children. Thus, we have
- Worked on a number of successful and important legislative child welfare initiatives to enhance the capacity of tribes to provide quality child welfare services to the children and families that they serve, including bills that (1) 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, as part of a bill known as the Fostering Connections and Increasing Adoptions Act of (2) 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 (3) amendments to the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children that allow tribal home studies to be used for the purpose of interstate placement. It is estimated that passage of the Title IV-E and Title IV-B amendments will result in additional funding for tribal child welfare programs of more than $300 million over the next ten years. It will also make tribal foster care homes and relative guardianships eligible for payments on the same basis as the states.
- Served 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.
- Drafted a section of a Congressionally-mandated report on child abuse and neglect in Indian communities
- Worked 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
- Testified at a Congressional oversight hearing on state child welfare systems
- Commenced a project to review and compile the research and literature on the disparate treatment of Native Americans by the juvenile justice system with the goal of developing an advocacy program to effectuate change in the system
We are currently working to ensure the full implementation of the Fostering Connections Act and have prepared several documents to assist tribes and states in the implementation of the tribal provisions in that Act.
Tribal Provisions – P.L. 110-351
Title IV-E: Helping Tribes meet the legal requirements
Fostering Connections: The Role of the States
