Tribal Child Welfare Practice Findings

This section discusses tribal-specific approaches to working with families, including traditional or culturally based practices. Also included are participants’ views about working in the community and meeting the unique challenges of American Indian/Alaska Native families, as well as needs about program infrastructure and child welfare workforce issues.

Approach to Working with Families

The majority of tribal child welfare programs that participated in the NRC4Tribes needs assessment reported that their programs’ approach was in alignment with the strong emphasis on relationships that has been identified in many tribes’ traditional values, practices, and worldview (Cross 1986). Lucero (2007) explains that American Indian/Alaska Native cultures and communities are relationship based in that each individual exists within an intricate web of familial, kinship, tribal, and community relationships. Furthermore, behaviors and interpersonal interactions occur in response to, and are mediated by, the interplay of the individual’s relational connections. When working from a relational and holistic world view, tribal workers typically conceptualize family struggles as resulting from a lack of balance in critical areas of individuals’ relationships, not only those with other people, but with the environment, self (mental and emotional functioning), and the spiritual world. Services are aimed, then, at restoring balance across all domains of functioning (Cross 1997). From a relational perspective, tribal child welfare staff aim to serve children and families in a way that recognizes that these individuals are integral members of the tribal community who should be respected, helped to regain balance, and supported in order to heal from the life circumstances that have challenged their well-being.
 

What’s important is showing the compassion that we bring to the table, that we don’t ever look down on them, that we hear them, we respect for what they have to say. No matter what is going on, we treat everybody as if they are an individual. I'm a community member that wants change in our community and for the healing process to begin in our community.

                                                                                                                                            –Tribal Child Welfare Director

Moreover, tribal child welfare programs are community based and built upon a foundation of important cultural values held by the tribal community. Honoring and respecting the relationships between tribal members and the cultural knowledge that resides with members of the tribal community, as well as exhibiting personal behavior and actions that are in alignment with cultural norms, were critical aspects that tribal child welfare workers felt they must incorporate into their practice. Cultural values exhibited by many tribal child welfare programs and workers included

• Always showing respect;
• Listening deeply and thoughtfully;
• Striving to understand others’ situations;
• Honoring and maintaining tribal relationships;
• Helping others whenever you can and to the fullest extent possible; and
• Recognizing individuals for who they are, that is, problems or struggles don’t make an individual a bad person; it is not one’s place to judge another, and that challenging life circumstances reflect bad decisions or circumstances beyond one’s control; and these poor decisions do not reflect on the individual’s inherent worth.

Tribal child welfare program staff reported being deeply committed to keeping children with their families and in their tribal communities, as well as to maintaining children’s cultural connections. A sense of obligation to make sure that everything possible was done to prevent the severing of children’s connections to their extended families and the tribal communities of which they were a part drove programs and individual workers. Programs and workers sustained their commitment despite serious challenges that included a lack of adequate funding and insufficient staff. Commonly, many tribal child welfare workers saw their work as an investment in the future of their tribes.

For example, although few programs had funding specifically for family preservation or prevention services, most programs incorporated prevention into their day-to-day operations. The close-knit structure of many tribal communities made it possible for workers to informally track families that might be experiencing stressors or risk factors that could lead children to becoming unsafe. Tribal workers’ embedded place in the community and their status as fellow community members also permitted them to check in on these families regularly and provide informal support without stigmatizing them as having problems or being involved with “social services.”

Tribal child welfare programs’ relational emphasis is also a holistic approach that includes an understanding of the importance of providing for the material well-being of children and families. Tribal child welfare programs frequently provided clothing, food, furniture, appliances, and school supplies to not only families currently involved with the program but also to those who might be at risk for involvement if they did not receive the needed items.Although often not specifically designed as such, many tribal child welfare programs were seen by community members as a “one-stop shop” for a collective range of services that included propane or heating assistance; transportation to medical appointments or work; counseling and substance abuse treatment; and links to cultural activities such as language classes, ceremonies, and tribal community events. One person described how their program negotiates gas costs with a local business in order to ensure that families have adequate heating in the winter. 

In other tribes, the child welfare program was a part of a larger social services department. However, regardless of formal structure, most tribal child welfare programs strove to meet as many needs of families and community members as possible, either within the program or by having workers directly connect families with services. Accessing needed services again reflected the relational foundation upon which tribal child welfare programs were built insofar as many workers typically engaged personally with family members to link them with resources rather than simply providing a phone number and expecting the individuals to call or handing out a list with possible sources of resources.

One common difference that needs assessment participants identified between tribal child welfare practice and that of state or county programs is that tribal workers understand that families typically need more time than is allowed by state/county regulations to change problem behaviors, such as an addiction to drugs, or to stabilize their housing or employment situation.  Thus tribal workers, many of whom had at some time in their careers worked for state or county child protection departments, found that the extended timeframes possible when a case was under the jurisdiction of the tribal court and in the hands of the tribal child welfare program provided families with a greater chance to be successful and to reunify with their children.

Furthermore, tribal child welfare workers conveyed that they typically interacted with the families they served more frequently and with less emotional/psychological distance than non-Native state/county workers. Families spoke about high trust in their tribal worker despite being involved with the tribal child welfare program. Families felt that tribal workers understand them and can appropriately judge the contextual challenges they face (such as poverty, high tribal unemployment, and a different standard of housing adequacy) in a way that state/county workers cannot. In turn, tribal child welfare workers related that they felt trusted by the families they served, and that they could more accurately access safety and risk factors in families based upon their knowledge of prevailing community standards and cultural norms.

Strengthening and maintaining their working relationships with families, rather than simply overseeing case-plan compliance, was also a focus of many tribal workers. Tribal child welfare workers were seen by families as taking an approach that involved doing whatever it takes to help families succeed. Workers also expressed this commitment to children and families and frequently referred to it as working “hands on.”The aspects presented above are examples that are again congruent with the relational perspective upon which much of tribal child welfare programs’ practice is based.

Although tribal child welfare programs’ practice approach may appear less formal than that found in many mainstream child welfare departments, tribal child welfare programs can be seen to be integrating the central practice principles of empowerment theory and incorporating a family centered, strengths-based, and holistic perspective in their work. Central to the tribal approach is an emphasis on partnering with families both in case planning and throughout the duration of a case; incorporating extended family and community members in planning and service provision; and collaborating as a team with other tribal departments and community providers.

Tribal child welfare programs frequently did not call their practice interventions by terms commonly used in state/county child welfare departments, such as family group conferencing or team decision-making meetings. However, the tribal processes were found to be similar to these mainstream child welfare interventions in that their intention was to listen to families; match families with services to meet their expressed needs; engage community and extended-family supports in order to ensure child safety; aid parents to take steps needed to care for their children properly; and mutually agree upon culturally appropriate placements for children when out-of-home care was needed. Interestingly, tribal program staff members typically did not see these actions as being anything they implemented specially, as they are at times in mainstream child welfare programs, but rather as the natural way the program worked with families that needed help.

Moreover, as reported by workers and families, family engagement appeared to be heightened in tribal worker/family relationships. This may, in large part, reflect a perception on the part of both parties that there is less racial, cultural, and socioeconomic distance between them, and because they understand that they share a common foundation in their tribal culture and community membership. However, even in cases in which the tribal worker was non-Native or from another tribe, families still reported that, in most cases, the tribal worker was more understanding and better versed in the family’s situation than a state/county worker would be.

Although stakeholder interviews clearly identified family engagement as a strength, 40% of interview participants identified engaging families and youth as a critical need area for T/TA, and 37% identified family decision-making processes as a critical T/TA need area.

 Another characteristic of tribal child welfare practice that is unique to tribal child welfare programs is the number of workers who may be related by blood or clan membership to a number of the families served. Or workers might have additional information about caseload families’ circumstances that had not come formally through their work, but rather from extended-family members or through other tribal social or community sources. This closeness presented opportunities and challenges to workers and programs. At times, it facilitated case planning, kinship foster care placements, and linkages with needed services. At other times, this closeness presented barriers, as when community relationships brought with them certain expectations regarding how cases would be handled or when powerful and/or politically connected families exerted pressure on workers to ignore risks to children or to make special accommodations for members of their families.

In review, tribal child welfare programs’ approach to working with families is committed to:

• Keeping children in their homes and tribal communities;
• Seeing families succeed;
• Doing “whatever it takes” in order to provide needed services;
• Incorporating an understanding of the family’s context or situation;
• Involving extended families and kin;
• Maintaining children’s connections to birth parents, wherever possible;
• Respecting cultural values and norms; and
• Developing and maintaining strong worker/family relationships.

Table 2. Attitudes, Behaviors, and Practices of Tribal Child Welfare Programs and Workers

Culture-based Services

The infusion of culture into tribal child welfare programs is intricate and multifaceted. Importantly, it involves much more than common child welfare cultural competency recommendations have typically called for, such as accepting that some families may wish to incorporate traditional practices in their service plans or being comfortable with and seeing value in referring children or families to cultural activities such as powwows or tribal-specific gatherings. Instead, culture in tribal child welfare programs creates a common bond among families, children, workers, and communities and lies at the heart of programs’ and workers’ commitments to serve. As such, the majority of tribal child welfare programs operate from a foundation of cultural and tribal values (of which non-Natives are typically unfamiliar) that are reflected in the overall program philosophy and that shape the attitudes and approaches that workers take in delivering services.

Of note is that within every tribe, members can be found along a continuum of spiritual beliefs and practices ranging from those who are very traditional to those who are Christian or of other faiths. As a result, when speaking about spiritual and cultural values, there is no “one-size-fits-all” belief system among tribal communities. Although, frequently interviewees appeared to consider tribal cultural values to be those in close alignment with the tribe’s traditions.

In addition to being structured upon a foundation of cultural values, culture-based child welfare services frequently are provided by a worker who is a member of the tribe, or at a minimum, a member of another tribe. Cultural values, traditions, and practices are thought by many programs to be incorporated naturally when provided by a worker who shares the same tribal heritage. There appears to be a generally held belief by tribal members that child welfare services provided by a tribal person provides an inherent infusion of cultural knowledge and sensitivity that would not be possible with a non-Native worker. Tribal child welfare staff also bring with them personal cultural attributes, such as language fluency or knowledge of particular traditional practices that contribute to the cultural foundation of the tribal child welfare program. These workers are also felt to be more likely to act in ways that are congruent with cultural norms that are expected by families and community members in areas such as behavior, communication, and relational styles.

A number of participants related that, due to historical events and processes, their tribes have experienced a level of cultural loss or cultural erosion that has limited the number of tribal members who have retained knowledge of tribal traditions and practices. Their tribal child welfare programs may be attempting to incorporate services based on specific cultural elements at the same time that staff members, as well as the wider tribal community, may be engaged in relearning and re-embracing these traditions and practices. Thus learning about, teaching about, and practicing culture are in a continual dynamic interplay within many tribal child welfare program. Almost 40% of survey respondents identified maintaining cultural values as being a critical need area for T/TA. Despite these types of challenges, representatives of many tribal child welfare programs expressed a deeply held desire to help the families and children they serve to learn about their tribal culture and incorporate cultural and spiritual elements as a means to facilitate healing and well-being, for the family and the tribal community.

Tribal child welfare programs identified the following services and practices as exemplifying the incorporation of and respect for tribal culture:

• Offering families the choice to incorporate cultural practices or participate in cultural activities as part of their involvement with the tribal child welfare program;
• Supporting families that want to incorporate ceremonies and traditional cultural practices by connecting them with traditional healers, spiritual persons, or crafts persons;
• Referring children, youth, and families to cultural activities and cultural programs in the tribal community that will assist them in strengthening their cultural knowledge and understanding;
• Incorporating Native-specific curricula such as the Fatherhood Is Sacred and Positive Indian Parenting programs;
• Involving elders and community members in programming and in the provision of culture-based services to children, youth, and families;
• Making cultural adaptations to non-Native interventions and programs;
• Encouraging and facilitating the participation of children, youth, families, and foster care providers (including non-Native foster parents) in community events;
• Using language, history, and cultural programs to build identity and resiliency in children and youth and as a form of prevention programming; and
• Collaborating closely with the cultural programs of other tribal departments and community organizations so that cultural activities connect to tribal child welfare services.

Many tribal child welfare program staff members viewed culture-based services and interventions as being an integral part of the healing of families and communities, and a number of program staff sought recognition of these services as equivalent to Western or mainstream services. However, a good number of directors and workers felt that, in many instances, state/county child welfare departments are unwilling to accept this equivalency, and instead denigrated culture-based services or saw them as novel and unproven approaches that should be adjunct to mainstream child welfare interventions. Increasing understanding on the part of state/county departments regarding the benefits and efficacy of cultural interventions was seen by tribal child welfare programs as critical.

Family and Community Challenges and Strengths

This section summarizes several challenges faced by the families and communities served by tribal child welfare programs that were repeatedly cited by needs assessment participants from across the range of tribes represented. As discussed above, participants recognized that strengths can be found in each family that becomes involved with a program and that tribal child welfare workers are able to identify these strengths and incorporate them into their efforts with each case. However, substance abuse, mental health concerns, poverty, historical trauma, and barriers to services were reported to be prevalent and seen as the most serious challenges faced by tribal families and communities. As such, the following four subsections present additional details that were shared by participants in regard to these challenges.

Substance Abuse

Participants report that tribal communities continue to struggle with high rates of substance abuse. This was often considered to be an effect of historical trauma and/or attributed to contextual factors such as the isolation associated with living in remote areas. A large number of survey and interview comments mentioned the impact that substance abuse has had and continues to have on tribal child welfare practice. According to many child welfare workers, directors, and supervisors who took part in this needs assessment, a large percentage of child welfare cases in tribal communities involve substance abuse-related problems. Further, substance abuse was seen by participants as directly contributing to many of the difficulties some families have reunifying with their children, creating challenges finding suitable foster homes, and often playing a part in criminal involvement and behavioral difficulties for youth. When substance abuse was mentioned, participants frequently also mentioned that it co-occurs with mental health problems, domestic violence, and child neglect.

A strong theme that emerged was that tribal child welfare programs addressed the impact of substance abuse by looking at the issue developmentally and working to connect family members with services that spanned the range of developmental stages, including infants with prenatal substance exposure, children with fetal alcohol syndrome, juveniles, and adults. Services that incorporated family centered and culturally relevant approaches that address the effects of substance exposure on the family unit were also seen to be critical.

Mental Health

Typically, participants stressed mental health problems as a critical family issue, directly followed by “there are not enough services” to meet the need. However, in some communities, mental health services are available but are considered ineffective or not the right type of service. Foster parents also expressed the need for training and counseling to help children with severe mental health, trauma, and behavioral problems, noting the link between behavior problems and placement changes.

A specific mental health issue discussed by several interview participants was the increase in the number of suicides in tribal communities. Suicide is an important issue in tribal communities, with research showing that suicide rates are twice as high among tribal youth compared with other youth (Freedenthal and Stiffman 2004). The quote below illustrates this statistic in the actual experience of one tribal community.

Historical Trauma

The term historical trauma is used to describe the collective impact that a group of individuals who share a common identity experience as a result of traumatic events inflicted over generations (Brave Heart and DeBruyn 1998; Evans-Campbell 2008). Historical trauma was first used to describe Jewish Holocaust survivors and their children and is now increasingly evident in Native American communities, in which losses have been profound, including genocide, loss of land, environmental damage to land, loss of children to child welfare systems, forced family relocation, and other traumatizing events.

Many participants discussed historical trauma and its impact on tribal families. Statements indicated that historical trauma affects families’ abilities to stay connected with each other; feel positive and proud of tribal traditions and heritage; and establish working relationships with nontribal partners.

A number of interview participants talked about how historical trauma is often felt by individuals and through generations on an unconscious level, and that identifying and talking about it is one step toward healing. This healing process, however, is complex and needs to take into account cultural norms. For example, Evans-Campbell (2008) reminds us, as did some participants, that survivors of traumatic events tend to avoid talking about the events, and that this may be compounded in tribal families and communities in which the norm may be to not speak directly about certain events or to talk only indirectly about personal and painful feelings. Additionally, more than 40% of survey respondents identified addressing historical trauma with families as a critical need area for T/TA, and another 44% identified it as a moderate need area for T/TA.

Service Barriers

Similar to the focus of comments around insufficient mental health services, interviewees discussed the severity of problems with families accessing services. These centered on

• Transportation,
• Childcare, and
• A lack of service providers, including challenges related to living in a rural community, such that if an individual burns one provider bridge, there aren’t any others.

Participants emphasized that transportation issues can influence reunification (e.g., if services are only available off-reservation, children may be kept in state custody in order to access services), the ability of families to meet service goals, and the ability of youth to attend educational and other positive activities. When parents have to travel great distances to access services, childcare is needed to watch children for long periods of time. Participants reported challenging solutions to these issues, such as paying for a taxi to get to services or taking a bus. In some locations, difficult mountain passes make it impossible for families to receive services. Overall, service challenges centered predominantly on having too few providers to meet the need and on difficulties accessing services due to transportation.

Community Strengths

Participants reported multiple strengths in tribal communities and among tribal families, including relying on kin, neighbors, and other community members to care for children and drawing on scarce resources to address community needs. Participants were clear that having strong cultural bonds and traditions have powerful effects on families and in communities, but that cultural erosion and inconsistency in the level of interest in maintaining cultural traditions are concerns.

Child Welfare Program Infrastructure

Policies and Procedures/Practice Model

Tribal directors were asked in their interviews to describe their practice model, policies, and procedures for guiding child welfare practice. Survey respondents were also asked to rate their need for T/TA for child welfare policies, procedure, and practice model support. Thirty-seven percent of respondents identified the development of a practice model as a critical need area, 40% as a moderate need area, and 17% indicated no need for T/TA in this area. Of note is that, although this did not emerge as a higher area of need in the general survey, interviews with the tribal directors suggest that many directors were unclear about the term practice model when the question was posed. Once interviewers clarified the question, the majority indicated that they did not have a formal practice model, and many do not even have their policies and procedures in a written document. Again, a good number of the tribal agencies were quite small, with very few staff. Often they have developed informal, yet more traditional, methods and do their jobs in collaboration with their colleagues and community members, on a case-by-case basis.

Some tribes that were interviewed did not see a need for a written practice model and felt that their program was functioning well without it. Further, they reported that the lack of a written practice model did not mean that their program necessarily lacked structure or contained gaps that would leave children at risk of harm. However, many tribes recognized a need for a more formal and documented practice model, and gave several reasons as to why this would benefit their tribe. First, as discussed in the previous section, having a written practice model is helpful for ensuring effective and consistent practice. It is also very advantageous when establishing a tribal/state agreement and articulating the need for funding. It is helpful to have practices and procedures documented when hiring and training new program staff. Another advantage mentioned by tribes is that it helps determine the purpose and scope of a tribal child welfare program. Many tribes mentioned the challenge of trying to meet the needs of families under very stringent budget constraints. Smaller tribal child welfare programs do everything from welfare and housing assistance, to transportation, truancy, and all manner of prevention services. Having documented policies and procedures that establish the scope of the program would help directors negotiate with the tribal government and other community service providers and partner more effectively in order to serve families.

One reason some needs assessment participants identified for having a documented practice model was that it would help tribal child welfare programs better communicate their purpose and values to their tribal governments, families, and community partners. Other participants, whose tribes are structured so that the tribal council makes final decisions and recommendations to the tribal court, felt that having a practice model would help inform decision makers about child welfare issues and family needs. For tribes such as these, council members with final decision-making authority sometimes do not have child welfare training or knowledge about policies and practice. Written practice models also help programs defend against political ramifications that result from making difficult decisions about families in the community. One interviewee described having had to defend a worker to the tribal council after the worker had removed the children from the home of a council member’s family due to safety concerns. In the quote below, the benefits of having a written practice model is described.

Three of the tribes that were interviewed mentioned that they have gone through, or are engaged in, process mapping in order to formalize their child welfare practice and “map” what happens in a case from beginning to end. These tribes are all using a structured process coached by a consultant. One of these tribes is at the end of a five-year business process-mapping project, and two tribes are engaged in this process as part of an Implementation Center project. All of these tribes feel that the process has resulted in a clarification of the roles of the program in the community and of individual responsibilities and has led to improved, more effective practice.

Data and Technology

The need for improved management information systems (MIS) to track child welfare cases emerged as one of the most critical needs for T/TA, with more than half of survey respondents indicating a critical need for automated case management data systems, improved service monitoring, and outcomes tracking for families (see Table 3).

Table 3. Data and Technology Needs for Tribal Child Welfare Programs from General Survey