UMD’s Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies (CRTCWS) recently received a $2 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services. This funding will help collect data on best practices and partnerships in American Indian child welfare.
Professor Emeritus Priscilla Day is the principal investigator for the project. “The goal is to document an intergovernmental partnership model around ICWA [Indian Child Welfare Act],” says Day. “A model that supports family preservation—and really—reunification.”
The Partnerships in American Indian Child Welfare Best Practice project will receive $500,000 per year for the next 4 years. This work will involve a collaboration with St. Louis County, the Wilder Foundation and Minnesota’s ICWA guardian ad litem program (which happens to be the only tribal guardian ad litem program in the country).
Day says this funding builds upon the foundation of previous CRTCWS grants that involved training the child welfare workforce on ICWA and how to work effectively with American Indian families. This has been a longtime focus of the center, which is based in UMD’s Department of Social Work and will celebrate 20 years in 2025.
“The center has quite a legacy—and the bulk of that is around tribal child welfare practice. This is a continuation of that good work,” Day says.
Upholding ICWA
The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) was passed in 1978 due to the disproportional rate at which Native children were being removed from their families. Since then, this legislation has been a standard by which tribal child welfare cases are adjudicated.
The intent of ICWA is to preserve Native families and culture. The law remains as essential today as it was when it passed more than four decades ago. Progress has been made but American Indian children are still 16 times more likely than their white peers to be placed in foster care in Minnesota.
Many people, systems and organizations are involved in child welfare cases—from child protection and social services to law enforcement and the courts. The project's final objective is to provide a roadmap on how to integrate services to better serve Native children and families.
In the first year, Day and her team will work with the Wilder Foundation to identify current best practices in American Indian child welfare. They will assess whether there are workforce capacity building needs or larger policy issues that need to be addressed.
The next step will be to develop a logic model and implement a plan that targets ICWA guardians ad litem to track outcomes. The final report will include important recommendations about how to build trust between state and tribal systems.
“The reason the center has been successful is that we have always enjoyed the support of tribes in Minnesota,” explains Day. “All of our programs are guided by tribal child welfare directors and the tribal community. That benefits everyone because it helps us have confidence that we are engaged with projects that are going to result in positive outcomes.”
Header: Priscilla Day (left) speaking at a meeting with Minnesota's ICWA Tribal Advisory Council in 2023 along with Sandy White Hawk (right).