Introduction to Child Welfare History, Policy and Process 2012-2013

PACC Module: Child Welfare History, Policy and Process Permanency and Adoption Competency Certificate

Introduction to child welfare history, policy and process

2012-2013

This training is designed to provide you with a better understanding of the public child welfare system, the policies that guide practice and the impact of the system on the lives of children and youth that experience child welfare services. In particular, this training will also highlight best practices for working with American Indian children in the child welfare system to achieve permanency. The training includes the following sections:

Section #1: Introduction

Section #2: The Relational Worldview

Section #3: The Indian Child Welfare Act

Section #4: Clinical considerations working with American Indian children, youth and families

Section #5: Policies and practices: Understanding the child welfare system

The learning objectives for this training are included below. At the conclusion of this training, you will be able to:

#1. State three aspects of the Relational Worldview

#2. List the placement preferences according to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)

#3. Name at least three ways in which workers may confuse ASFA and ICWA policy requirements.

#4. Identify two terms used to describe the identity-integration difficulties of American Indian individuals that have been placed in non-Indian boarding schools, foster or adoptive homes.

#5. Name at least three ways in which African American and American Indian children experience disparities in the child welfare system.

#6. List the three questions that are answered as a result of a child protection investigation.

#7. List at least one way in which a thorough social and medical history benefits children, foster and adoptive parents, child welfare workers and agencies.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 2 #8. State the factors public child welfare workers consider in making an individualized determination of a child’s needs for foster and adoption placements

#9. Name at least two core values of Family Group Decision Making.

You will need internet availability in order to watch or listen to some of the videos or audio streamed content.

Required viewing or audio content will be indicated by the blue arrow icon.

Some items are optional and included for those of you who want more information. Optional items are indicated by the red “More Information” button.

Thank you!

We have many people to thank for collaborating with the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare on the development of these modules. In particular, thank you to Cathy Bruer-Thompson, Rachel Kupcho, Jodi Raehsler, Melissa Sherlock, and Sandy White Hawk.

Minnesota has long been seen as a leader in innovative practices in child welfare. This module, along with our next module, Permanency and Adoption Through the Lens of the Relational Worldview, will take a deeper look into the public child welfare system; how children and families come into the system, the policies and practice issues that govern child welfare practice, and the ways children are affected when it comes to issues of permanency and adoption.

In these modules, we will also address areas of tension within the system, including how policies and best practices sometimes seem to conflict, racial disparities and in particular, we will be highlighting child welfare practice with American Indian families, children and youth.

Understanding the public child welfare system, including the policies and funding that govern services and practice is important for practitioners and clinicians who work with children and families that have experienced child welfare services.

Permanency and adoption placements occur at the end of a very long progression for children and families. At each stage of the child welfare process there are federal and state and tribal laws, mandates and policies, as well as agency and evidence-based best practices, child welfare workers must implement.

Practitioners often collaborate with child welfare professionals. Understanding the difficult decisions that child welfare professionals make on a daily basis for children and families and the influence of the child welfare system on children and families enable therapists to apply their clinical skills to better support families to achieve permanency stability.

There are three main sections to this module. First, we will learn about a philosophical framework for thinking about working with children and families conceptualized by Terry Cross, Director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association, called the Relational Worldview. We will be looking at this in much more depth in class next session.

The Relational Worldview offers us a way to look at the policies that govern child welfare practice. While the Relational Worldview was developed to specifically address the worldview of American Indian families, it is a framework that certainly is applicable for families from many other ethnic and cultural communities.

Second, using the Relational Worldview framework, we will begin to look at the historical and current contexts of working with American Indian

Third, we will close this module by delving into the child welfare system – the policies that govern how we practice, and the impact on the children, youth and families involved in the child welfare system.

Throughout this module, you will be asked to read articles, view online videos or webinars, and reflect on issues.

You will not need to submit pre-session homework to instructors, however if you want continuing Education Unit (CEU) credit for the Minnesota Tribal State Agreement webinar, you will need to follow through on the instructions with the online learning module and complete the requirements for CEU credit.

This module also entitles you to six PACC CEU credits upon completion of an evaluation of the module.

Section #2: Introduction to the Relational Worldview

Terry Cross, Director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association and leading expert in child welfare policy and practice with American Indian families developed this framework he calls the Relational Worldview.

The following information on the Relational Worldview is based on series of articles written by Terry Cross for Pathways Practice Digest and the link to the articles is provided at the end of this section.

A “worldview” is way to describe how a group of people (a culture, subgroup, etc.) think about and relate to the world around them. In other words, it is a group’s collective thought process.

There are two predominant worldviews in the world today, the linear worldview and the relational (sometimes called cyclical) worldview.

The linear worldview:

 Comes from European and mainstream American beliefs and thoughts  Is logical, time oriented, and systematic  Understands the world as linear cause-and-effect relationships between events

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 5 According to Terry Cross, human service professionals are taught that if we understand the cause of a problem, then we will know how to find the intervention that will help. Interventions are aimed at eliminating the causes or symptoms.

The relationship between the intervention and the symptom is measured and a successful intervention is based on the degree to which that measurement changes.

The relational worldview:

 Comes from indigenous and tribal cultures  Is intuitive, non-time oriented, and fluid  Every event is understood in relation to all other events regardless of time, space or physical existence  Health exists when relationships and spirituality are in balance or harmony

When human service professionals are taught to understand problems with a relational worldview, they learn to see problems in terms of unbalance and disharmony in a person’s relational world.

In the relational worldview, human service professionals see and accept the complex and seemingly illogical interrelationships. Interventions are not targeted to symptoms or causes but on how to restore balance in the person’s life.

In the relational worldview, because life is seen as interdependent, when one part of a person’s life changes, other things change as well.

Neither the linear or the relational worldviews are “good” or “bad” – they are just two different ways of thinking and approaching the world in which we live. The linear worldview focuses more narrowly on symptoms and the relational worldview focuses more on harmony.

The Relational Worldview model

The relational worldview is a way of seeing the world. This is the worldview practiced by many American Indian and indigenous communities; however, other racial and ethnic minority communities operate from a relational worldview perspective.

The relational worldview can be applied on an individual level, a family or community level and a macro or systems/institutional level.

Context Mind

Spirit Body

The four quadrants represent the four major forces, or sets of factors, that exemplify balance.

 The context quadrant includes culture, community, family, peers, work, school and social history  The mind quadrant represents cognitive processes such as thoughts, memories, knowledge and emotion, as well as emotional processes such as feelings, defenses and self-esteem  The body quadrant includes all physical aspects, including genetics, gender, sleep, nutrition and substance use  The spirit quadrant includes both the positive and negative learned teachings and practices, metaphysical, and/or innate forces

Context

In the relational worldview, relatives, kin and community forms a system of care that are interdependent and system reliant.

The community supports and buffers even further. Family resilience is supported by role models, community, church, elders and natural healers and helpers. Terry states,

“Healthy interdependence is the core of the extended family. It does not foster dependence and does not stifle independence. Rather it is a system in which everyone contributes in some way without expectation of reciprocity. I give my cousin a ride to the store, and while at the store, my cousin buys some items for our grandmother. Our grandmother is home watching my brother’s children who are planning to wash my car when I return home. No one person is paying back another, and yet the support and help cycle within the family.”

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 7 There are negative contexts as well. Poverty, oppression, substance abuse, crime, trauma and unemployment are all contextual factors in which Indian families live.

However, even these factors have contributed to the strength of Indian families, as Terry says, “Oppression, for all its damage to us, creates an environment where survival skills are developed and sharpened.”

Mind

Sharing stories is a way of teaching and learning in the relational worldview. Storytelling is a resource for communicating identity, values, life skills and resiliency.

Ego defenses are a way of dealing with the overwhelming historical and current trauma of oppression. According to Terry, denial, splitting, disassociation and projection are each useful in their own way as a means of surviving oppression.

American Indian families have experienced great trauma and are still working to recover from the intergenerational grief that followed.

Body

The physical balance in the relational worldview includes the actual individual body, but also includes family structures and roles including how kinship is expressed.

The act of eating together relates to the body because of the act of nourishment, but it also is an act of community and sharing and expressing the bond of kinship.

Spirit

In the relational worldview, human behavior is influenced by spiritual forces. Positive spiritual influences include faith, prayer, meditation, healing ceremonies and positive thinking.

These positive spiritual influences help buffer negative practices. Spirituality is an important part of American Indian communities.

Through the lens of the relational worldview, these quadrants are always in a state of flux. At different times our physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual selves will be different than at other times, depending on our context.

Our systems work to re-balance as our context, and thus the other areas of our life, change. Maintaining balance or harmony is said to be a signal of health.

Understanding the relational worldview

For many of us, learning to see things from a different perspective is like viewing picture/illusion below.

At first, each of us will either see the young woman or the old woman; some of us will not be able to see the other figure until it is shown to us (hint: the young woman’s “ear” is the old woman’s “eye” and the young woman’s “necklace” is the old woman’s “mouth”).

One of the major paradigm shifts from the western perspective is that in the Relational Worldview, services need to be aimed toward restoring balance for the client and interventions may not be directed at “symptoms.”

The underlying question is not “what’s wrong with you” but “what happened to you?”

Most helping professionals are very familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. This model is based on hierarchy, and a male, European lens.

Mr. Cross often is asked, “Underneath it all, aren’t we all the same? We all have the same needs (i.e. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs).”

Mr. Cross says the answer to this is a paradox. “Yes, we all have the same needs,” says Mr. Cross, “but the response to organizing how those needs are met are culturally specific.”

Each culture conceptualizes and organizes how needs are met in a different way.

Conflict with cross cultural differences occur when helping professionals, particularly those who have a linear worldview, have different ideas about how needs are met.

Understanding how each culture responds to meeting needs is very important when thinking about permanency and adoption.

When placing children in out-of-home care, to what degree is the potential placement resource able to address the child or youth’s needs in a culturally responsive way according to the child, family or community’s worldview?

The cultural responses to meeting our needs are shown below.

Spirituality Ceremonies Self Actualization

Stories Art, music, dance Self-Esteem Family & Parenting Social activities Social Belonging Religious Formal laws and institutions rules Safety Social rules Food

Housing Physiological Clothing

Maslow’s identified needs through “indigenous eyes” would look more like the model below. Instead of a hierarchy, the Relational Worldview centers spirituality as the core of each person.

Self-Actualization

Shelter

Service Relationships Role Love Spirituality

Safety Security Belonging

Food Water Identity Esteem

According to Terry, in the linear worldview, assessment is about examining a problem by splitting factors into independent cause-and-effect relationships. While this has value in developing the knowledge of each factor and helps us create interventions, it also fails to acknowledge the whole person.

In the linear worldview, the person is considered the problem, whereas in the relational worldview the person is not said to have a problem, but to be out of harmony.

In the linear worldview, we treat the “person” and in the relational worldview we treat the “balance.”

The Relational Worldview can be applied to organizations and communities, and each element of the individual model has a parallel in an organization.

Policies & procedures Physical Management structure Economic Personnel management Political Fiscal management Social Service design Environment Infrastructure Strategic planning (Context) (Mind)

Mandate Human beings Organization’s spiritual values Mission Resources Leadership Purpose (Spirit) (Body) “Champions” Vision Information Mission Funding Coalitions

In thinking about the relational worldview from an organizational perspective, the same idea of approaching the organization from a holistic view of balance and harmony, rather than attempting to isolate individual “problems,” is relevant.

Organizational change and the approaches in which organizations operate are typically from a linear worldview.

Summary

In the relational worldview, it is the interdependent relationships among the quadrants that help us understand behavior. The system naturally wants to be in harmony; thus we can promote resilience by helping contribute to restoring balance.

Interventions should not be targeted toward a specific set of symptoms but toward restoring harmony. No single factor restores balance, it is only through the interplay between all the factors in which harmony can be maintained.

The full article is available at:

http://www.nicwa.org/services/techassist/worldview/worldview.htm

Historical context for Indian Child Welfare Act

Those of us without personal experience or American Indian heritage often have very limited knowledge of the history, or lived experiences, of American Indian families.

In the Adoption History, Law and Process modules you learned a little bit about the Indian Adoption Project. In order to understand the context for why and how the Indian Child Welfare Act was enacted, we must take a more in-depth review of the historical context impacting American Indians.

We may know a little bit about the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) but think that the disparities that led to the passage of ICWA have mostly been addressed and resolved.

 ICWA was a response to the high rates of removal of Indian children for the purpose of assimilating these children to dominant White society.  As many as 25%-35% of Indian children were removed from their homes and placed into boarding schools and foster and adoptive homes prior to the enactment of ICWA in 1978.

[Students at Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Photo by Carlisle-www.army.mil]

Children were physically, sexually and psychologically abused. In addition, the majority of the children were subjected to the trauma of being stripped of their family and relationships, culture, traditions, language and spirituality.

The purpose of the boarding schools was cultural genocide. In 1892, Col. Richard Pratt, founder of the Carlisle school, said,

"A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one, and that high sanction of his destruction has been an enormous factor in promoting Indian massacres. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."

The photographs below show how the children placed in the boarding schools were physically altered to remove all cultural aspects. You can see that their hair was cut, their clothing changed, and while not evident they were also given Anglo names and prohibited from speaking their language or practicing their spiritual beliefs.

Impact of the boarding schools

Minnesota in particular is responsible for the removal of an estimated one in four Indian children during what Sandy White Hawk calls the “Indian Adoption Era.” Practitioners and child welfare workers must understand how historical and generational trauma has had generational ramifications for American Indian families and children.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 14 Many of the children and youth taken away and placed in boarding schools and foster and adoptive homes attempted to find their ways back to their families, reservations and tribes only to have lost their ability to speak their language or understand the cultural practices and traditions. Some never made it back home to their families and permanently lost those family and tribal connections.

Many of the struggles in the American Indian community can be traced back to this legacy of cultural genocide, including self-medication through alcohol and drug use and mental health issues. Consider the following:

 Depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder may be typical responses to the trauma and abuse suffered by American Indians.  Another long-term consequence resulting from the era of child removal was the impact of institutionalization on future parenting. o When children are removed from families and placed in institutions, they lose role models for parenting. o When institutionalized children, particularly those who were also abused and neglected, become parents they have no model for how to be nurturing parents.

Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Braveheart, Associate Professor of Social Work at Columbia University, defines historical trauma as “cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations, emanating from massive group trauma.”

Dr. Eduardo Duran, a clinical psychologist who has focused his practice and research on understanding and treating families impacted by historical trauma, has written a book, Healing the Soul Wound. Dr. Duran defines historical trauma as “the trauma that occurs in families and is then passed on to the following generation until the trauma or soul wounding is dealt with.

The following is a link to Dr. Duran’s talk, Healing the Soul Wound: Native American Postcolonial Psychology with Eduardo Duran.

It is approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes long (including Q&A). This is optional audio clip that we highly recommend. http://www.ciis.edu/About_CIIS/Public_Programs/LecturesEvents/audio_archives/Duran_sp11 _audio.html

An Overdue Apology: Powerful Student Film Asks For Apology and Understanding in Minnesota

The following link takes you to a series of videos created by students at the University of Minnesota to help educate Minnesotans on the history of American Indians in the state. We highly recommend that you take time now to read the story of how this film series was conceived and created and watch the videos. The entire series is 62 minutes.

The link is http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/05/05/video-spotlight-powerful- student-film-asks-for-apology-and-understanding-in-minnesota-111521

Language and vocabulary

As you can imagine, given the history of forcible removal and placement of Indian children into boarding schools, foster homes and adoptive homes, the term “adoption” as a Western concept does not elicit positive feelings among many American Indian peoples.

To many in American Indian communities, adoption does not relate to the best interests of a child. Instead, adoption means genocide, abuse and trauma.

For this reason, child welfare and mental health professionals must be very sensitive with their use of language when talking about permanency options for American Indian children.

It would be inaccurate to assume that American Indian families do not adopt. Many cultures, including American Indians, have practiced informal adoption or cultural forms of “making relatives.”

Many adults have taken in, cared for, and raised children that were not birthed to them. Historically, traditional formal adoption – as practiced in the United States with a western worldview – meant severing both legal and emotional ties between a child and their biological family, and issuing the child a new social identity through the legal process of finalization.

The concepts of “terminating parental rights” and changing birth certificates to name adoptive parents as birth parents are not valued in all cultures and societies.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 16 Some tribal jurisdictions are practicing customary adoption. In Minnesota, customary adoptions finalized in tribal courts may be recognized by state courts even if a termination of parental rights has not occurred.

Since customary adotion extends the family without severing ties, as Sandy White Hawk says, “that maintains balance between grief and loss during times of hardship.”

The federal government recognizes customary adoptions as a culturally appropriate child welfare practice and families who adopt through a customary adoption are eligible to adoption assistance if other eligibility criteria are met.

As an example, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe has revised its judicial codes to include Title 4a. Customary Adoption Code which may suspend parental rights rather than terminate parental rights.

The document of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe Customary Adoption Code is available at http://www.whiteearthtribalcourt.com/WhiteEarthCustomaryAdoptionCode.doc.pdf.

More information on customary adoption resources is available on the NICWA website at http://www.nicwa.org/adoption/.

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)

In Module #1: Adoption History, Policy and Process, you learned that ICWA is the federal act that protects the best interests of Indian children, families, and tribes and tribal communities.

ICWA is often misunderstood as only a law about placement preferences, but as Michelle Robertson, Social Work Professor at The College of St. Scholastica, states, people are unaware of what “ICWA did to change the perspective of child welfare, for example home-based services, family preservation, [and] kinship. It was these provisions that initiated the changes in the 1980 Child Welfare Act for all children. ICWA is not JUST a placement guideline!”

At this time, please follow the link below to listen to the training on ICWA by the Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Services at the University of Minnesota – Duluth. This module will take approximately 15 ½ minutes. http://www.d.umn.edu/~egeary/icwa_module/index.htm

Once again, important tenets of ICWA include the following:

 Applies to American Indian and Alaskan Native children who are 1) unmarried, 2) under the age of 18 (or under age 21 and entered foster care prior to age 18), 3) is a member (or eligible for membership) of a federally recognized Tribe or is the biological child of a member of a Tribe.  Gives Tribes exclusive jurisdiction in child welfare cases involving Indian children living on a reservation and when the Tribe takes guardianship of the child.  Outlines a hierarchy for children in which preference is for placement with: 1. A member of the child’s extended family 2. A member of the child’s Tribe 3. Another Indian family (not of the child’s Tribe) 4. A non-Indian family, with Tribal approval

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 18  Requires that active efforts are made to provide services to the child’s family and to reunite Indian children with their parents.  Permits a termination of parental rights only if evidence beyond a reasonable doubt is provided, including the testimony of a qualified expert witness* that the child will be experience serious emotional or physical harm if rights are not terminated and/or that active efforts to provide services have been unsuccessful.

*An expert witness is defined as someone who is versed in the ways of traditional Indian child-rearing practices.

Families do not always know that they have rights and in particular, American Indian families may not ask a lot of questions about what is happening to them or what the process will be while they are involved in the child welfare system. The Minnesota State Ombuds office created A Family Guide to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). This document, written by Michael Hogan and Dawn Blanchard, was developed to answer questions families may have about their rights.

The guide also includes timelines to help families understand the court processes. The Family’s Guide to the Indian Child Welfare Act is available at the link below. http://www.ombudsfamilies.state.mn.us/Brochures/A%20Family%20Guide%20to%20the%20In dian%20Child%20Welfare%20Act%20doc%20II.pdf

 The Indian Child Welfare Act: A Primer by Hon. Maurice Portley at http://www.myazbar.org/AZAttorney/Archives/Feb00/indianchild.pdf  The Child Welfare Information Gateway: ICWA at http://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/courts/icwa.cfm  A Family’s Guide: How Child Welfare Works with American Indian Families at http://www.cwla.org/childwelfare/fg08.pdf  A Practical Guide to the Indian Child Welfare Act by the Native American Rights Fund http://narf.org/icwa/index.htm

Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act (MIFPA)

Minnesota Statutes, Section 260.751, is the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act, or MIFPA. MIFPA was enacted into law in 1985 to strengthen and expand ICWA in Minnesota. In the event of a conflict between ICWA and MIFPA, ICWA takes precedence.

Similar to how ICWA governs the placement of American Indian children nationally, MIFPA is the state law that regulates the placement of American Indian children in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Tribal/State Agreement is a policy that allows for the state of Minnesota to enter into working relationships with Minnesota tribes for the delivery of child welfare services. We will learn more about both MIFPA and the MN Tribal/State agreements in this module.

Minnesota tribal state agreement (online module)

We are now going to learn about the Minnesota Tribal State Agreement by watching an online module offered by The Center for Regional and Tribal Child Welfare Studies at the University of Minnesota - Duluth.

This online training is approximately 40 minutes in length. The training includes two case studies. Please follow this link to view the online module on Tribal State Agreements. http://www.d.umn.edu/sw/Presenter%20files/index.htm

Section #4: Clinical considerations working with American Indian children, youth and families

Considering the legacy of forced removal and placement in boarding schools and non-Indian foster and adoptive placements, clinicians and child welfare professionals are likely to encounter American Indian adoptees and families that are still grieving, angry or resistant to the concept of adoption.

 Many of the families involved in the child welfare system are likely to have had one or more generation that experienced boarding schools or foster care or adoption.  American Indian adoptees who experienced boarding schools or non-Indian foster and adoptive homes may find parenting challenging, particularly when they have lost their role models and/or tribal communities.  In First Nations Orphan Association Truth, Healing and Reconciliation Forums: Responses to a new Approach, Sara McCracken writes that, “Many American Indian adoptees [adopted to non-Indian homes] are likely to interpret their adoption as inhibiting and oppressing toward their personal and cultural identity” (2011).  Researcher Susan Harness found in her oral interviews of adult American Indian adoptees from the Indian Adoption Project era that depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and other behavioral issues were a symptom of their feelings of disconnection and

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 21 fractured identity, not fitting in with either their Indian worlds or the majority culture (Harness, 2008).  Child welfare professionals and clinicians need to consider the parent’s potential disconnection and displacement when working with them and understand the concepts of, and impact of, historical or generational trauma and grief.

Historical or generational trauma

Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart describes historical unresolved grief as “the grief that accompanies the trauma” accumulated as a result of “over 500 years [of] physical, emotional, social and spiritual genocide from European and American colonialist policy.”

Dr. Yellow Horse Brave Heart states that historical grief has also been seen in Jewish Holocaust survivors and descendants, as well as Japanese American internment camp survivors and descendants (Brave Heart 1998, 1999, 2000). [historicaltrauma.com]

The following links are to a presentation by Dr. Yellow Horse Brave Heart. Each video is approximately 10-15 minutes each, so you will need to set aside a total of about 1 hour for the entire series.

 Begin watching Video 1 at 2:10 into the clip to skip the introductions and begin the main content: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8YCYmUEb2s  Video 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvIugmtaasw&feature=relmfu  Video 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFSecltOusg&feature=relmfu  Video 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv0E3muEMpE&feature=relmfu  Video 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SjGXwKHcZU&feature=relmfu

For reflection:

 How does the concept of historical trauma influence how you approach your work with children, youth and families?

American Indian adoptee’s voices

Understanding the sense of loss of cultural identity for Indian adoptees is a key skill in working with Indian adoptees. Please read the first-person stories in the article on the next page.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 22 To Dry the Eyes of Indian Adoptees Before 1978, most Native American adopted children were taken into non-Indian families. Some of those “Lost Birds” have found a way to make peace with the past and reclaim their native culture.

Stories and photos by Mary Annette Pember March 16, 2010

A girl in a traditional jingle dress dances with a stuffed animal at a powwow of Native American adoptees, in Minneapolis. The story about the arrest of white missionaries trying to adopt allegedly orphaned Haitian children struck a chord with me. Similar media stories about well meaning white celebrities adopting pretty babies of color from poor third world countries have also rubbed me the wrong way. You see, American Indians have a long history of white folks trying to help us by taking away our children. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1978, white parents adopted 35 percent of American Indians in the Figure 1: Rachel Kupcho U.S., often forcibly. Indians have learned that no amount of good intention can wipe away the painful loss of our culture.

Not long ago, I traveled to Minneapolis as I worked on a story about the Lost Birds. The Lost Birds are those Indian people who were adopted by non-Indian families prior to 1978. More personal than I had realized, this story caught me by surprise; it touched the center of who I am as an Ojibwe woman and as a mother.

We adopted our son Danny from my tribe in 2005 when he was 7 months old. Danny came into our lives as though directed by an outside force. Both my husband I felt that he was meant to be raised by us and that he was meant to know he is an Ojibwe man. That “knowing” has been a deep wordless tie between us and one to which I feel all people, non Indian and otherwise, are entitled.

So, it was with some trepidation that I began a story about Rachel Kupcho, an Ojibwe women and her adoptive white parents. Would I be able to keep my feelings about interracial adoption in perspective?

I worried about this and other things during my flight to Minneapolis. Unexpectedly, I noticed the Mississippi River or Great River in the Ojibwe language as the plane descended into the Twin Cities. The power of that great water caught me by surprise, pinching my heart in a nameless, primordial way and I felt a homecoming not without pain. With relief, I recalled that in Ojibwe tradition, we women are the ones who care for the water and I was comforted. I thought of our traditional Ojibwe stories describing this connection with place and the land. Once again, I was awed by the wisdom and nuance of my culture that at once understands yet celebrates the ineffable. A wave of calm washed over me; I knew that the story would emerge in the way that it should.

In the end, I came to see that many mothers, Indian and non-Indian but all women who care for the water, built Rachel’s life and strength, like the Great River.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 23 At first glance Rachel didn’t look like much of a Lost Bird to me. In fact she appeared to be just the opposite. Confident and beautiful, she strode around the Minneapolis American Indian Center with calm authority. She seemed to easily carry the pride that is so typical of an Anishinabikwe or young Ojibwe woman as she worked to organize the annual Gathering of Our Children and Returning Adoptees Powwow.

Sandy White Hawk has helped organize this powwow for several years. She is executive director of the First Nations Orphan Association, an organization that helps returning adoptees find their way back to their culture. Since Sandy suddenly took ill, Rachel stepped in at the last minute to coordinate the event. Organizing a powwow is no small task. There is quite a bit of protocol involved and the potential for drama is high. Rachel, however, seemed born to the task; to look at her I would have never suspected this was the first time she had overseen a powwow or that until a few years ago had had very little exposure to her culture. Like many who attended this powwow Rachel was adopted at birth and raised by white parents.

When the doors of the Indian Center opened up, people began to trickle in. It was easy to identify the Lost Birds. Their fear and guarded emotions seemed almost palpable as they stepped Figure 2: Sandy White Hawk, who uncertainly into the gym. They were drawn by the sound of the directs the First Nations Orphan Association, began the powwow for drum that they may have been hearing for the first time on that day. adoptees and attended the most recent Looking more deeply into their faces, I sensed hope, a hope that gathering with her husband, George. they might begin to return home.I noticed Rachel ushering people into the gym with a calm smile and I wondered how she has come by such self-assurance. The simple yet enormous answer begins with her parents, Keith and Lisa Kupcho. Typically, they are in the background, quietly helping set up tables for the event. They discretely excuse themselves once the heavy lifting is finished. They will return when their daughter needs them later in the evening for the Wanblenica or Orphan’s Song and ceremony.

Like so many Indian children prior to 1978, Rachel was given up for adoption by her birth mother from the White Earth Ojibwe Reservation in Minnesota and placed with a non-Indian family. Rachel, however, does not share the typical Indian adoptee history that is so often filled with stories of physical, sexual and emotional abuse. Painful and more insidious than the physical abuse that adoptees report, has been a rejection of their natural spirit. The shame of being Indian and therefore inferior is a lasting wound that remains open for countless adoptees. Too many try to medicate these wounds with alcohol and drugs, vainly trying to ease their pain.

This generation of “Lost Birds” as they are often called, resulted from the well -intentioned U. S federal policy of assimilation that sought to integrate Indians into mainstream culture. The policy was intended to help lift Indians out of the poverty and social ills that plagued the reservations. Instead, it supported the near wholesale removal of children from their homes, families and cultures. Before the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, that gave tribes jurisdiction over their own families, thousands of Indian children who

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 24 entered the social services system were adopted into non-Indian families. In their misguided efforts to help raise Indian people from poverty, churches and social service agencies mistook Indian culture as the culprit in the community’s problems. Therefore all things “Indian” were to be stamped out. Language, culture and the Indian tradition of child rearing that includes extended family, were viewed as backward and wrong. Understandably, many Indian adoptees internalized these messages and have had difficulty returning to their cultures. Rachel Kupcho, however, seems to have made her way back to her people with relative ease, achieving a comfort level that is enviable

To know her story fully, I must meet all the mothers, the water caregivers who have contributed to her life and journey home.

Rachel is one of four ethnically diverse children adopted and raised by Lisa and Keith Kupcho in Chanhassen, Minnesota about 20 miles outside of Minneapolis. Small and brown at the front, the Kupcho home sits a bit further back from the street than do the other houses. I imagine a certain sweet shyness about the house. Inside, the walls are richly covered with paintings, photos and prints of women of color and their children, lots of children. Photos of the Kupcho children and a seemingly endless convoluted photo storyline of their friends’ children and grandchildren are everywhere Figure 3: Mary Annette PemberLisa Kupcho, at right, and her We visited over coffee in her kitchen. There was an daughters (l-r) Eve, Rachel, and Sarah, catch up around the aura of love in that kitchen that seemed to speak kitchen table in Chanhassen, Minnesota. The Kupchos also have of bottomless acceptance. I found myself moved a son, Aaron. All their children were adopted. to tears several times during the interview.

“Fortunately, I learned early on that I couldn’t fix everything in my children’s lives,” said Lisa.

Potentially, there was a lot to “fix” in being a white mother to her racially diverse clan. Now grown, the children are; Aaron, Filipino and Norwegian, Sarah, Scotch and Irish, Rachel, Ojibwe and Italian and Eve, African American and German.

She recalled being confronted by an African American instructor years ago during a parenting class about adopting and raising mixed race children

Lisa recovered from her sense of feeling unjustly accused and resisted storming out of the class.

“I realized that I needed to hear what this woman had to tell us. She prepared us for not thinking we could fix everything with parental love alone,” she recalled

Not only did she learn that she wouldn’t be able to isolate her children from the hurt of racism, she learned to be open to those who could mentor her through the parenting process.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 25 Enter Sandy White Hawk, a challenging mentor if there ever was one. Sandy recalls her Indian caregiver handing her, at 18 months, through the window of a pickup truck into the hands of white missionaries who had come to the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota to “help the Indians.” Sandy internalized her adoptive parents message that she was and ever would be a pagan, a member of an inferior race. She was also physically and sexually abused in the home. Seeking to soothe her wounded soul, she turned to drugs and alcohol. Nothing seemed to take away the hurt until she found recovery and ‘came home’ over 20 years ago to her people and culture. She recalls the sense of relief and healing upon hearing the American Indian drum for the first time.

“The drum goes to that place where there are no words. As adoptees when we first hear it, we realize it has been what we were longing for.

Since, she has been compelled, almost obsessed in an effort to share this experience with other adoptees, knowing in her belly that a healing path lies therein. Working with a number of elders and spiritual leaders including Jerry Dearly, Lakota, she helped bring the Wanblenica or Orphan’s Song and ceremony that wipes away tears to Indian adoptees. It was during a Wanblenica that she came into the Kupcho’s lives.

The first Wanblenica offered by Sandy’s group was presented at an annual National Indian Child Welfare Association conference in Duluth. Rachel had recently been hired at NICWA and was helping to organize the conference. Typically, her parents were there as well, pitching in where they could, happy to be of service to their daughter. The theme of the conference was “Reclaiming the Stolen Ones.

Lisa recalls Keith’s look of surprise over the theme’s name. “Stolen? Ooooh, a bit harsh.” he said.

Rather than feeling threatened, Lisa saw the conference as a learning opportunity. Soothing Keith, she reminded him of their motto: “Whatever is good for our kids, is good for our family.”

Lisa has come to believe that there is a core piece of something missing for adopted kids, a piece of abandonment for which they must seek healing in their own way. She has spoken often to her children about this need and assured them of her support if they choose to explore their biological background and culture more fully

“Whatever I can do or bring into their lives that makes them more healthy and whole advances our relationship. When you’re a mother first, you do whatever you can to make your child feel well and whole and supported.”

She was excited and honored to participate in the Wanblenica. In the end “Rachel’s growth has been our growth,” she affirms

Lisa and Keith stood firmly behind Rachel during the ceremony, their hands resting on her shoulders. Tears streamed uncontrollably down her face during the Wanblecheya. “I felt so unbelievably loved. It was the most profound moments of my life.” Rachel recalls. For Lisa, the ceremony represented a healthy sense of completion. “It was an embrace and acknowledgment of loss,” she said.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 26 Although she has never felt lost or misplaced, Rachel felt the relief of being welcomed into the circle of her culture at last. Not only was the event a homecoming, according to Rachel, it was an acknowledgment from her parents that her quest for her heritage is important

“Up until that point, it was the only thing they weren’t able to give me, but they were present when I received this gift,” she remembers

Rachel is now convinced that without the unconditional love and support of her parents, she would not be strong enough to do the work that has now become her passion and her calling.

Working to support the Indian Child Welfare Act is now her life. She is a court advocate for ICWA and helps Sandy in her efforts to gain funding for a project to create a social work curriculum that includes knowledge about Figure 4: Rachel Kupcho stood between her parents, Lisa and Keith, Indian families and culture. “Everything that at the Wanblenica, the Lakota Orphan Song and Ceremony. Rachel has happened in my life has prepared me to said it was "the most profound moment of my life.” do this work.”

Lisa sees Sandy as a wonderful mentor and role model for Rachel. “It has almost been a relief to have others in our lives who could give Rachel what she needs”, Lisa laughs, recalling some mother daughter challenges. In the end, for Lisa, she has gained a friend in Sandy.

The passion of these three women, from such different backgrounds, has intertwined to form a tapestry of family love and support. I am reminded of my earlier vision of the Great River and how it unites its many channels into one big river, much like these women or water caregivers have united to grow Rachel into an Anishinabikwe.

As the Adoptees Powwow comes to an end, the Sisseton Wahpeton Vietnam Veterans Color guards insist on having their photo taken with Rachel. Wearing full eagle feather headdresses and military fatigues, they surround her creating a vision of embrace, acceptance and support. She has, indeed, arrived home.

Note: The reporting and writing for this project were supported by a grant from the USC Annenberg's Institute for Justice and Journalism.

Take the next ten minutes to listen to this 2008 NPR story,

American Indian Boarding School Haunt Many.

In this audio clip, several people discuss their experiences and the impact of boarding schools on their lives, including how this experience has affected their parenting. This audio clip will take 7:46 minutes.

[ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865]

Summary

The Indian Child Welfare Act was created to protect American Indian families in response to the legacy in the United States of the attempted cultural genocide and forced assimilation of Indian tribes and communities through the removal of their children.

The Indian Child Welfare Act restores the rights of tribes to determine what is in the best interest of their chidren and families.

For more information on Indian child welfare best practices and policies, the National Indian Child Welfare Association website at http://www.nicwa.org has many resources.

Section #5: Policies and Practices – understanding the child welfare system

Minnesota is a state-supervised, county administered state. That means each of the 87 counties in the state as well as the 11 Tribes implements their child welfare programs differently.

 The state is responsible for providing guidance about implementing the statutes, rules and other policies into practice; monitoring program outcomes, providing trainings for

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 28 child welfare workers, distributing funding (both federal and state) for child welfare programs, and providing support and training on the Social Service Information System (SSIS), which is Minnesota’s centralized child welfare data system.

 County social service agencies are responsible for the actual implementation and management of child welfare services for their county residents. This includes:

o screening reports of alleged abuse and neglect o conducting child protection investigations and family assessments o providing case management services for children and families involved in child protection o licensing foster care providers o recruiting prospective foster and pre-adoptive parents o placing children in foster and adoptive homes, and o providing permanency services.

Maps from the MN Secretary of State Map from the MN Secretary of State website http://www.sos.state.mn.us/index.aspx?page=878 http://www.sos.state.mn.us/Modules/ShowImage.aspx?imageid=1060

For more information about all 87 counties in Minnesota: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_Minnesota.

For more information about Minnesota tribes, see: http://www.mnaimhac.org/tribes/tribes.htm.

Module #1 briefly covered many of the federal policies that govern child welfare. We will look at some of these in more depth from a Minnesota state, county and tribal perspective.

The policies that govern Minnesota child welfare practice are largely included in the following MN Statutes, chapters and sections:

 245A – Licensing  245C – Background studies  259 – Adoption, Change of name (for those not under the guardianship of the commissioner)  260.851 – Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children  260C – Juvenile Safety and Placement [Child protection/CHIPS (Child In need of Protection or Services)/Placement/Permanency/Adoption of Children under Guardianship of the Commissioner)]  626.556 – Reporting of maltreatment of minors – o Defines abuse and neglect o Provides definitions for mandated reporters (those required to report abuse and neglect) and voluntary reporters

In addition, the following MN Rule Chapters govern child welfare practice:

 Rule 2960 – Licensing and certification programs for children  Rule 9560 – Social services for children

Many of these laws include specific rules regarding timelines. For example, the law specifies the number of days from the time a child is removed from a home to when a court hearing must be held to decide the child’s placement.

In August, 2012, the Minnesota legislator passed changes to our child welfare and adoption laws. Bulletin #12-68-07 is a Summary of 2012 Child and Family Services Legislation that was enacted.

For the DHS Bulletin on the 2012 legislative changes, go to this link http://www.dhs.state.mn.us/main/idcplg?IdcService=GET_FILE&RevisionSelection Method=LatestReleased&Rendition=Primary&allowInterrupt=1&noSaveAs=1&dDoc Name=dhs16_169947

Full texts to these statutes and rules are available on the MN Office of the Revisor, which provides current links to legislation www.revisor.mn.gov.

When working with public child welfare agencies or organizations, the term “IV-E dollars” is often heard.

People may recognize that IV-E has something to do with funding or how money can be used to pay for services, but many do not realize the extent to which these funds impact the types of services that are available and to whom they are available.

The term “IV-E” refers to Part E of the Social Security Act. Title IV is the Grants to States for Aid and Services to Needy Families with Children and for Child-Welfare Services. Part E is the Federal Payments for Foster Care and Adoption Assistance.

Some things to know about Title IV-E:

 The purpose of IV-E monies is to give states funding for programs and services for children and youth in foster care and for adoption assistance for children with special needs.  IV-E plays a significant role in child welfare  Not all children in foster care are eligible for IV-E reimbursements.

In addition, Title IV-E is about best practice. Title IV-E outlines requirements for, among several things, specific practice for:

 Case plans  Court oversight  Child and Family Service Reviews (CSFR)

Title IV-E funding is very complex. To learn more about IV-E funding the following links will provide more information about Title IV-E funding.

 For the actual policy on the Social Security Act website - http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/ssact/title04/0400.htm  For information on the IV-E for Tribal agencies through Fostering Connections - http://www.fosteringconnections.org/resources?id=0015

Another resource for those of you interested in learning more about Title IV-E, this online training module is available through the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare. This is an OPTIONAL module.

This module will take approximately 1 to 1.5 hours. The module is available at https://umconnect.umn.edu/p51342380/.

Who are the children in Minnesota’s child welfare system?

The most current information about children in Minnesota’s child welfare system is available from the 2011 Minnesota Child Welfare Report.

 In 2011, Minnesota counties, and the Leech Lake and the White Earth Bands of Ojibwe, assessed 17,716 reports of maltreatment involving 24,962 children  11,368 children spent some time in out-of-home care.  About 67% of discharges from care involved return to their caretakers prior to placement; another 8% were adopted.  476 children came under state guardianship (court terminations of parental rights). o 46% of children entering guardianship were in the birth–3 age group o 61% were White o 19.1% were African American  57 state ward youth aged out of placement at age 18 without a permanent home

You can find out more about the children in Minnesota’s child welfare system at https://edocs.dhs.state.mn.us/lfserver/Public/DHS-5408D-ENG

Children with disabilities and children from communities of color experience overrepresentation in the child welfare system.

Children may have behavioral, developmental, emotional, physical, sensory, or learning disabilities, and many children have multiple disabilities. Almost 39% of the children in out of home care in MN have one or more disability compared.

African American and American Indian children are also over-represented in the child welfare system. The Minnesota 2010 Child Welfare Disparities Report found that compared to their white counterparts:

 African American children are three times more likely to be reported for maltreatment  American Indian children are six times more likely to be reported for maltreatment

There are many differing opinions about the reasons for disparities. Disparities among American Indian and African American children occur in all stages and points throughout the child welfare process.

 Be subjects of child protection assessments and investigations  Be subject of a neglect report  Be placed in out of home care  Experience more placement moves  “Age out” of the foster care system without permanency

White children that were involved in the child welfare system were:

 More likely to receive timely face-to-face visits with a social worker  Less likely to receive a determination of maltreatment  Least likely to be placed in out-of-home care during an investigation  Most likely to receive a mental health assessment  Most likely to be adopted within 24 months of last entry into care  Had quickest finalization (from date guardianship was transferred to the Commissioner)

For more information about child welfare disparities including:

MN Child Welfare Disparities Report –

https://edocs.dhs.state.mn.us/lfserver/Public/DHS-6056-ENG

Children with Disabilities Involved in the Child Welfare Continuum - https://edocs.dhs.state.mn.us/lfserver/Legacy/DHS-5965-ENG

Children come into the child welfare system in a variety of ways. The most common way is through a report that a child is being abused or neglected.

Reports may be made to a tribal, county or state agency through mandated reporters (social workers, teachers, therapists, doctors – people who come into daily professional contact with children and are required as part of their professional duties to report suspicions of child abuse or neglect).

Minnesota Statute 626.556 defines a mandated reporter as:

“A professional or professional’s delegate who is engaged in the practice of the healing arts, social services, hospital administration, psychological or psychiatric treatment, child care, education, correctional supervision, probation and correctional services, law enforcement or employed as a member of the clergy and received information while engaged in ministerial duties.”

Note that there are exceptions to requirements for clergy members. For example information received during confession or other privileged communication is not considered required for mandatory reporting.

Reports may also be made voluntarily by:

 The general public  Neighbors  Community members  Family members of the child or children

Reports of maltreatment are made to different agencies. Which agency to contact when making a report depends on who is allegedly abusing or neglecting the child in question.

 If the report involves abuse or neglect outside the family, such as in an institution, then the report can be made to law enforcement or the state or government department that licenses the agency in question. o A person would contact the Department of Education if the abuse or neglect happens within a school by a teacher.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 35  When a person makes a report about a child being abused or neglected within their family, they can call law enforcement or the county child welfare agency.

In Minnesota, cross-agency notification between law enforcement and social service agencies are required. Law enforcement entities are responsible for immediately notifying, both orally and in writing, the local child welfare agency upon receiving a report.

The child welfare agency has the same responsibility to notify the local police or county sheriff upon receiving a report Jacob’s Law, passed in August 2012, requires law enforcement to notify social services when a child is the subject of abuse or neglect by any person outside of the family household (see Minn. Stat. 626.556, Subd. 3 & 7; Minn. Stat. 626.556, Subd. 10(a), 10a(a)-(b)).

Each county has a phone number for people to call and make a report. If they call a county or state child welfare agency they will first talk to a screener. The screener or intake worker’s job is to talk with the person making the report to get the details of the alleged abuse or neglect.

Questions might include:

 Was the abuse or neglect witnessed in person by the reporter?  The time and place the abuse or neglect occurred  Was there are any injuries?

The person making the report can be anonymous to protect the reporter from retribution by the family identified in the report.

Below is the table of the source of the reports made in 2010 (from the Minnesota 2010 Child Welfare). As you can see, the majority of the reports were made by mandated reporters in law enforcement, schools, social work, counseling, and health care. Approximately 15% of the reports were made by relatives, friends, acquaintances and/or neighbors. Only 2.5% of the reports in 2010 were anonymous.

Screening a report

Once the report is made it is the screener’s job to decide if there is enough information, based on statutes, to warrant an investigation into the allegation of abuse or neglect or to be forwarded for a family assessment.

Not all reports are transferred to a child protection investigator (sometimes called intake worker, depending on the agency).

The agency will respond faster when the report involves a child that is in immediate danger of being harmed.

The following publication is from the MN Department of Human Services.

Go to the link below to read the Minnesota Child Maltreatment Screening Guidelines.

https://edocs.dhs.state.mn.us/lfserver/Public/DHS-5144-ENG

When a report of maltreatment is made, the child welfare agency must determine if the child is American Indian.

When a child or family is identified as American Indian, there are certain requirements that the child welfare agency must fulfill to comply with the Minnesota Indian Family Preservation Act and ICWA.

The Minnesota Child Welfare Training System created an ICWA/MIFPA Social Worker checklist to assist Family Assessment and Investigation workers to ensure the requirements of ICWA and MIFPA are being met.

The checklist provides guidance, as well as the legal citations, and includes the areas of:

 Intake (identifying an Indian child, tribal identification and notice, results of Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)/Tribal search and tribal membership)  Active efforts to prevent family break-up and to provide reunification services  Voluntary placement  Involuntary placement  Voluntary relinquishment of parental rights  Involuntary relinquishments of parental rights  Adoption

Take a few minutes to look at the checklist at the link below. [http://www.dhs.state.mn.us/main/groups/children/documents/pub/dhs16_1400 31.pdf]

Alternative Response or Family Assessment

The purpose of Family Assessment (as it is referred to in Minnesota) is to determine the family’s need for services. The purpose is not to decide if maltreatment occurred.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 38 Services are generally provided through community agencies and families are involved as much as possible. Family strengths are utilized in setting goals that will help keep children safe in their families.

Agencies may decide to have the case referred to Family Assessment based on:

 The severity of the reported abuse/neglect  The level of safety threat or risk to the child  The types of services available to the family  The ability of the family to participate in the services.

Over 67% of the child protection reports that were accepted for further inquiry were assigned for Family Assessment according to the 2010 Minnesota Child Welfare Report.

Investigations

Unlike Family Assessment, the purpose of investigation is to determine the level of child safety or risk to safety, and to determine if maltreatment, that is abuse or neglect, occurred according to the statutory definitions in Minn. Statute 626.556.

At the end of an investigation, the following are questions should be answered:

 Did maltreatment occur?  Is the child at risk for harm?  Does the child need protective services?

The answers to these questions, or “findings” in child welfare vernacular, are not mutually exclusive.

 The investigator may determine that maltreatment did not occur and the family does not need any services and the case will be closed.  The investigator may find that maltreatment did not occur but the family may need services. The family may be referred to community services.  The investigator may determine that maltreatment has occurred but that the parent or guardian is able to protect the child from safety threats or safety risks and therefore protective services are not needed.  The investigator may find that maltreatment did occur and the child is in need of protective services.

For reflection:

 When thinking about the families you serve, to what degree do you think they would understand the difference between family assessment and traditional investigation?  How could you help families understand the distinction between family assessment and traditional investigation? What key words or concepts would you emphasize?

Families who find out a report of abuse or neglect has been made regarding their child are under a lot of stress. They may be frightened, angry or withdrawn. They may also be very confused about what happens during the investigation or family assessment process.

The MN DHS has published “Families’ Guide to Child Protection.” This guide provides helpful information for families who are contacted by child protective services.

For clinicians, therapists and other practitioners working with foster and adoptive families in which child welfare was or is a part of the child’s history, or if you work with parents who have experienced child welfare services, this guide should be insightful for you as well.

For reflection:

 What would be your most immediate questions or concerns?  Does the following guide answer your questions as a: o Parent o Grandparent o Extended family member

Please take the time now to review this document below. As you review the document, put yourself into the shoes of a parent or relative that finds themselves involved in the child welfare system.

Families’ Guide to Child Protection: https://edocs.dhs.state.mn.us/lfserver/Public/DHS-3247-ENG

In Minnesota, it is state law that county child welfare agencies collect accurate health and social history information about children in foster care and children being adopted (Minnesota Statute section 259.43 for adoption and 260C.208 and 260C.212 subd. 4(e) for foster children).

The law states that a social and medical history must be started *no later* than the permanency progress hearing OR six months after the child has been placed in foster care (Minn. Stat., section 260C.60).

While each child welfare agency may have a different process of expectations of collecting social history data, it is imperative that this information is collected and provided to everyone as required by law.

For reflection:

 How would you feel if you lost all your personal information, such as photographs, school mementos, and sentimental objects from your past?  What information would you miss the most?  What if you lost touch with all of your family members? What information about your past or your family’s history would you want to reclaim?

A social and medical history provides documentation of the child’s physical, mental, social/emotional and behavioral strengths and needs which are important in determining adoption assistance benefits. The social and medical history also provides information for the child’s ongoing and future medical care.

Social histories must be provided to: 1. Adopting family – prior to pre-adoptive placement (signing of the Adoption Placement Agreement) 2. Department of Human Services – accompanying the Adoption Assistance application 3. Court with jurisdiction in the adoption proceeding – accompanying the adoption petition. 4. Youth who emancipates from foster care.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 46 The social history is a living document that must be continuously updated while a child is in out- of-home placement, and until permanency is achieved. The social history serves many purposes and is vital to the child’s medical, emotional and physical care.

 The social history helps agencies think about what interventions are appropriate for the family and child.  The social history helps new workers taking over a case to learn about the child and his/her family o Youth in foster care have described that having to talk about their past with each new social worker that is assigned to them is traumatizing  The social history also provides full disclosure to foster and adoptive parents so they can appropriately care for the child.  The social history is the child’s link to their family history

Helping foster/adoptive families understand the social and medical history

Many foster and adoptive families have expressed that their child’s social and medical histories were lacking important information. Often, they have no one to help them understand what is in the child’s file, or they do not know what information they are entitled to receive.

Photo from Tama W on http://lds.adoptionblogs.com/weblogs/fam ily-trees-and-baby-photos-what-s-an-a-1

Below is a factsheet written to help foster and adoptive parents understand their child’s social and medical history. http://www.mnadopt.org/Factsheets/Understanding%20Child%20Social%20&%20Medical%20History.pdf

 In addition to providing a copy of the written document, go over all of the information verbally with the pre-adoptive parent(s), preferably more than once.  Provide more than a just a list of a child’s diagnoses. Explain how the diagnoses may manifest as well as the implications for parenting a child with these diagnoses now and in the future.  Encourage the pre-adoptive parent(s) to consult with a physician, therapist, or other expert about the information contained in the document.  Give the pre-adoptive parent(s) a reading and resource list for the special needs relevant to the child.  Routinely ask the pre-adoptive parents if they have any questions and then answer them to the best of your knowledge.  Document in writing the date(s) the social and medical history was given to and discussed with the pre-adoptive parent(s) along with the list of attachments (e.g. assessments) provided. Consider having the pre-adoptive parent(s) sign to confirm receipt.

Importance of social and medical history for the child or youth

Most importantly, a thorough social and medical history also is important for the child. It is, after all, their information.

While it may seem time consuming in an already over-burdened schedule to document this information, once lost it is difficult to recall or relocate important information. People move, change jobs, and it is much more difficult and time consuming to try and find information weeks, months and years later.

In addition, missing social and medical history information seriously impacts the well-being of the child. This is, after all, the child’s personal history and information. The child has a right to know his or her history. This information has implications for the child’s future health and well-being, including the information she or he is able to pass down to future generations.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 48 Completing a social/medical history Social and medical histories need to be started as SOON as a child is placed in out-of-home care and updated frequently.

A detailed social and medical history for the child includes birth family maternal and paternal birth family information. Paternal family members are often not included in the social history. In Minnesota, the Birth Parent Social and Medical History form (DHS 3205) (SSIS 67) and Background and Health History form (DHS3235) (SSIS68) should be used.

Background and health information specific to the child include:

 Child’s name, date of birth, physical description, religion  Sibling information  Past and current health information o Birth, medical, dental and immunization history o Current health status and conditions, including medications o Mental health and therapeutic information  Placement history  Education history  Behavior and demeanor  Relationship and connections

Background and health information specific to the birth family should include:

 General characteristic and background information  Education and employment history  Medical and mental health history, including genetic mental health  Chemical dependency history, particularly any use of drugs or alcohol during the birth mother’s pregnancy  Reasons for the child’s placement  Information on both maternal and paternal relatives

The following helpful tips about completing a child’s social/medical history were created by Melissa Sherlock, Adoption and Permanency Policy Specialist at the MN Department of Human Services:

Do not include identifying information on birth family members (last names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers, etc.). Document as much historical information as you can determine, even for years the child was not in the county’s custody. Document the child’s placement history as thoroughly as possible, including dates, care providers’ first names, and most accurate reason for removal (not necessarily the code available in SSIS). Be as thorough and specific as you can with details, particularly about the abuse or neglect experienced by the child and the impact of that abuse and neglect. Clearly document the reasons why the child cannot live with his or her birth parents Be straightforward with uncomfortable information, but present it in the most sensitive manner possible. Include as much positive information about the child as possible (e.g. the child’s strengths, hobbies, interests, skills, talents, future aspirations, etc.). Include as much positive information about the birth family as possible Provide as much specific information as possible on the birth parents (e.g. the birth parents’ physical appearance, strengths, difficulties, hobbies, interests, skills, talents, family history, hometown, level of educational attainment, job history, life experiences, spiritual beliefs, medical and mental health history, etc.). If a child has exhibited negative behaviors, be clear in documenting the frequency and severity of the behaviors as well as if the behaviors are still occurring or when the behaviors were last exhibited. Document as much of the child’s developmental milestones as possible.

Begin requesting birth, medical, and dental records for the child as soon as possible after the child is placed in foster care. Make sure the child has current evaluations and assessments Begin gathering information for the social and medical history from the birth parents as early as possible in the child protection process Complete every section of the social and medical history. If something is not applicable or unknown, indicate that Give blank social and medical history forms to foster parents and relatives and ask that they provide as much information as is known If birth parents, relatives, and others are not cooperative in completing and returning a social and medical history form, gather the information through a face-to-face or phone interview Divide the responsibility for the completion of the various sections of the social and medical history to the individual social workers or program areas that are most appropriate (e.g. information about the birth parents should be completed by the social worker who worked with the parents through the child protection case). Educate and advocate to county and court decision-makers about the importance of and requirement for thorough social and medical histories Be sure that you are complying with all federal and state laws regarding disclosure of identifying and non-identifying information such as the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and State Government Data Practices [Minnesota Statutes, Chapter 13]. If you have data privacy questions, consult with your county attorney.

Finding information on the child’s background may be difficult, particularly if the child has had multiple placements.

 Child  People, including: o Child’s county case file o Child o Child’s birth, medical, o Birth or legal parents and dental records o Siblings o Child’s therapeutic o Maternal and paternal records, including relatives and kin treatment plans and o Current and former therapist notes foster parents o Child’s evaluations and o Current and former assessments group home or RTC staff o Child’s school records o Previous social workers  Parent’s child protection case o Child’s attorney file including: o Current and former o Parents’ Rule 25 chemical therapists dependency assessments o Guardian ad Litem o Parents’ psychological or o Current and former psychiatric evaluation mentors o Parenting assessments o Current and former o Child protection teachers and/or school investigator’s SSIS case social workers notes of initial o Current and former child maltreatment care providers assessment interviews o Current and former  Case transfer summaries coaches  EPC, CHIPS, and TPR petitions o Adults currently or and court orders previously supervising  Relative/kinship search child’s school, religious, documents and/or other community  Family Group Decision Making activities Conference notes

 Child’s birth, medical, immunization and dental records  Child’s psychological and psychiatric evaluations  Child’s other therapeutic documentation  Child’s attachment assessments  Child’s Individual Educational Plan documents  Child’s school report cards  Photos of child  Photos of birth parents, siblings, and other relatives  Photos of other important people  Videotapes of birth relatives or other important people  Letters from birth family members

Child protection case management – providing services to children and families

Concurrent permanency planning

Permanency planning begins the day the child is removed from the home.

The goal of permanency planning is to provide a safe and permanent home for a child.

For those children who need out-of-home placement, the goal is to work with the family to get the children reunified safety with their parents. At the same time, the worker is looking for a permanency option that will be implemented in the case the child is not able to be reunified with his or her parent – one that will mean the least amount of disruption to the child.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 53 Ideally, the child’s first out-of-home placement will be with a caregiver that will become the permanent placement (according to the definition of ASFA and ICWA (when applicable), in the event the child cannot be reunified with his or her parents).

Prior to the implementation of concurrent permanency planning, the framework was one of sequential planning. That is,  if, reunification did not occur and a termination of parental rights occurred  then the child placing agency would begin to search for a permanency option.

This approach meant that the time a child spent in foster care was lengthened while the child’s worker began the process of finding an adoptive home or other permanency option for the child.

Concurrent permanency planning supports the potential for relative/kin placements since engagement with the family around relative/kin caregivers are identified early on and through the Family Group Decision Making process, rather than after a termination of parental rights occurs when the birth family may no longer be willing to engage with the agency around identifying relatives that might be able and willing to provide a permanent home for the child.

To support relative resource families, according to the Practice Guide for Concurrent Permanency Planning, agency staff should:  Provide information about the roles and responsibilities of the resource family  Provide information about the child’s needs  Acknowledge the role shift the relatives will experience  Respect the family’s formal and informal support system  Share information about services and supports that are available to help the relative care for the child  Identify support services needed to promote stability  Coordinate services and communicate to meet the needs of the resource children and relative resource family.

Asking people to be a concurrent permanency resource is difficult, since it is very challenging for people to be able to simultaneously consider supporting both reunification and adoption or legal guardianship at the same time.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 54 Sometimes agencies find that families sign up to be a concurrent permanency placement when they really hope the placement will lead to adoption. Other families may agree to be a concurrent permanency placement when they really want to support reunification and realize they are not prepared to become adoptive parents or legal guardians.

Thus, while concurrent permanency planning is clearly more beneficial for children than sequential permanency planning, there are many challenges for those families who step up to take on this responsibility.

Concurrent permanency planning is also challenging for the child welfare professionals. For one thing, it is often very time consuming. In addition, child welfare professionals must acknowledge their own biases and beliefs about the practice. Just as families may struggle with managing a dual role of supporting reunification and providing permanency simultaneously, the child welfare worker may see concurrent permanency planning as a contradiction.

The following “10 Pitfalls of Concurrent Planning” are from Concurrent Planning—Existing Challenges and New Possibilities by Susan Brooks, Director at the Northern California Training Academy, Center for Human Services at UC Davis Extension and Visitation and Concurrent Planning in the October 2000 issue of Children’s Services Practice Notes For North Carolina Child Welfare Social Workers.

1. Not attending promptly to potential concurrent planning “time grabbers.” Social workers need to make sure they have completed any ICWA-required activities and also that they have determined paternity for the children in out-of-home care. They need to complete these activities at the very beginning of the case so they don’t delay future actions. 2. Giving social workers higher caseloads than they can handle to effectively practice concurrent planning. Concurrent planning is more time consuming than sequential planning. This is true not only because social workers need to work on Plans A and B at the same time but also because social workers need to commit to intensive work with birth parents to see if they can successfully reunify with their children. 3. Not having adequate resources for birth families. If families and social workers put together a detailed Plan A for reunification, but the county or surrounding area does not offer the services the birth family needs, it may be difficult for the birth family to succeed. By the same token, it isn’t fair to shortchange a birth parent’s plan because the county does not have the resources. Counties should assess service barriers and advocate for needed resources.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 55 4. Social workers may feel disloyal to birth parents if they practice concurrent planning. They may feel making a Plan B gives birth parents the message that they don’t believe the birth parents can succeed. Social workers need the training and support to realize that concurrent planning shifts the focus to finding permanency for children as soon as possible. If social workers have open and honest conversations with birth parents throughout the life of the case and include birth parents in the creation of both Plans A and B, they share responsibility for the case outcome. 5. At the other end of the spectrum, social workers can make the mistake of equating concurrent planning with adoption and therefore minimizing reunification efforts. This can lead to social workers scheduling fewer visits between birth parents and their children 6. Assuming that the initial assessment will infallibly predict case outcomes. This may also lead to minimizing reunification efforts and decreasing visitations if the assessment indicates a possible poor outcome. Ultimately, the child’s parents will support or prove wrong the assessed placement outcome. 7. Social workers investing in a particular outcome. Again, this mistake can influence how much time and energy a social worker puts into Plan A or B. Social workers need to allow the case to evolve from the family’s decisions and actions. 8. Designing case plans that are not family-centered. Put another way, the agency takes on responsibility for things the parents should be doing. Parents have both rights and responsibilities. Concurrent planning supports their active role in visitation, engaging in services and planning for their child’s future. 9. Offering foster parents and relatives an estimate of “legal risk.” Let the adults take the risks, not the children. Acknowledge that foster/adoptive parents are taking on the role of “Plan B” and still supporting parental visitation. This is not easy. Encourage foster/adoptive parents to become involved in parent-child visits to promote more supportive relationships with biological parents. 10. Interpreting 12 months as an absolute limit on reunification, regardless of parental progress. “There is a fine line between the judicious use of time limits to prevent foster care drift, and a rote enforcement that ignores the full picture of parental motivation, effort, incremental progress and a foreseeable reunification” (Katz, 1999).

One of the important considerations in thinking about the impact of the child welfare system on children is timelines.

In the history of child welfare services, there have been pendulum swings in the U.S. regarding how long children remain in foster care without achieving permanency. The push for permanency has not always been a priority.

After what was found to be significant delays in children remaining in long-term foster care for a large part of their childhoods and “aging out” without a “permanent” family, a shift toward prioritizing permanency occurred.

With the implementation of ASFA, the timelines shortened dramatically. Once it has been determined that a child is in need of protective services, the legal “clock” begins.

Court hearings include:

 Emergency Protective Care hearing  Admit/Deny hearing  Pre-trial hearings  CHIPS trial  Disposition review hearings  Permanency progress reviews  Admit/deny hearings for TPR  Post-TPR, Post-TLC (Transfer Legal custody), Annual Review for LTFC, 90-day review for adoption  Adoption finalization

Some considerations to remember:  Children aged 12 and over must be consulted in an administrative review, may attend court hearings, and must be part of developing an out of home placement plan  Tribes must be notified at least 10 days prior to an admit/deny hearing, and may request a 20-day extension

Shorter timelines is a large part of the Adoption and Safe Families Act. Permanency timelines in Minnesota will change effective August 1, 2012.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 57 The Children’s Justice Initiative, a collaboration of the Minnesota Department of Human Services and the Minnesota Judicial Branch, has developed several resources that outline the timelines in the child welfare processes. Please take the time to review the following documents below (links to these documents are also available at http://www.mncourts.gov/?page=4284

Permanency Timeline for Children in Out-of-Home Placement (with citations)

Flowchart: Removal to Permanency

Compare the Flowchart: Removal to Permanency from above with the flowchart on page 3 of this document, the Indian Child Welfare glossary and Flowchart on the next page.

For reflection:

Now that you have reviewed these timelines and flowcharts, please take a few moments to reflect on what you have learned.

 What is your reaction to these timelines?  How do these timelines reflect the linear or relational worldviews?  For mental health practitioners, how would these timelines affect your work with children, youth and families?

The Adoption and Safe Families Act 1997

In Module 1: Adoption History, Law and Process, you learned about the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. For review, the main tenets of ASFA included:

 Increasing the prioritization of the safety of children in the provisions of services, placements, and permanency  Not requiring reasonable efforts to reunify a child with his/her family if: o There has been a pattern of abusive behavior by the parent toward the child o The parent has been found to have committed criminal behavior with the child’s sibling(s) o The parental rights of the parent to the child’s sibling(s) have been involuntarily terminated  Implementing financial incentives in order to increase the number of foster care adoptions  Faster timelines toward permanency, implemented through the following: o Mandating petitions for terminating parental rights after a child has been in foster care for 15 of the last 22 months* o Concurrent permanency planning o Requiring a permanency hearing within 12 months after the initial foster care placement o Removing barriers to interstate and intercountry adoptive placements o Prioritizing adoption through requiring the inclusion of permanency in reasonable efforts and case plan documentation

* See Minnesota Statutes 260C.301 for Minnesota-specific laws on termination of parental rights.

ICWA/ASFA conflicts – David Simmons/Jack Trope

With the implementation of the Adoption Safe Families Act in 1997 (ASFA), a number of issues were raised because ASFA did not address how its provisions would impact American Indian children and the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Specific aspects of ASFA and ICWA may be particularly confusing for child welfare workers. David Simmons and Jack Trope, authors of P.L. 105-89 Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997: Issues for Tribes and States Serving Indian Children, assess the areas of conflict and the impact of ASFA on Indian children and families.

1. ASFA does not modify ICWA and workers should not assume ASFA policies supersede ICWA policies.

2. Conflicts may arise in the following areas of integrating ASFA and ICWA. The following are

 Reasonable/active efforts: ASFA eliminated the requirement for reasonable efforts in certain circumstances (as noted above) or on a case by case determination.

However, under ICWA, active efforts must be made to provide both rehabilitative and remedial services and/or programs designed to prevent the breakup of the Indian family.

As ASFA does not prohibit the state from making reasonable or active efforts based on a case by case basis, active efforts as required under ICWA does not have to conflict with ASFA.

 Termination of parental rights: ASFA requires a termination of parental rights (TPR) petition be filed under several conditions including the length of time a child has been in foster care, or the behaviors of the parent.

There are also exceptions, including if the child is being cared for by a relative, or if the state determines there are compelling reasons that it would not be in the child’s best interest or if the state has not provided the services necessary for the child’s return to the family.

Under ICWA, TPR may only occur if there is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the child is likely to experience serious emotional or physical damage if they remain in the parent’s care.

In the case of an Indian child, active efforts to provide the services needed to prevent the breakup of the family must be made before a petition to terminate parental rights can be filed.

 Permanency hearing: Under ASFA, a permanency hearing is required within 12 months of the date the child first entered foster care.

The date is defined as either:  The date the court made a finding that the child was subject to abuse or neglect;  60 days after the date the child was removed from the home.

An additional permanency hearing is required within 30 days after a court has determined that reasonable efforts to reunify the family are not required.

Under ICWA, the permanency hearings occur within the timelines established by ASFA; however decisions concerning permanency plans will be governed by ICWA, including issues of termination of parental rights.

Permanency plans involving out-of-home placement for American Indian children, including adoptive placement, are to comply with the placement preferences outlined in ICWA.

 Cross-jurisdictional placements: Under ASFA, states may not delay or deny placement for adoption when an approved family is available outside the geographical boundaries of the child’s placing agency.

Because of the placement preferences outlined in ICWA, there may be cases when it appears a placing agency is delaying or denying an “approved family” in another jurisdiction.

An “approved family” must be considered within the placement preferences; if this family is not within a preferred placement category, then the placement cannot be made unless there is sufficient good cause.

In addition, any delay related to a petition to transfer the case to a tribal court is not necessarily considered a violation of ASFA.

3. Potential tribal responses to ASFA

Tribes will need to become proactive in state court proceedings. Under ASFA, states are under pressure to achieve permanency for children quickly and tribes that take a “wait and see” approach may find decisions will be made without their involvement and will be difficult to reverse.

In addition, as case planning is a key component of ASFA, to increase the likelihood of positive, culturally-appropriate outcomes for Indian children, tribes must keep detailed documentation of the identification of community resources and desired permanency outcomes.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 66 Tribes may also desire to develop or revise tribal codes. For example, a tribe might define termination of parental rights and outline circumstances or reasons why a tribe might not file a TPR on a case-by-case basis in their code. Tribes may also codify definitions of “abandonment.”

Tribes operating IV-E and IV-B programs may develop their own policies and codes for background checks, define “approved” adoptive placements, and define placement preferences for children both on and off-reservation.

For the full document, P.L. 105-89 Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997: Issues for Tribes and States Serving Indian Children, copy and paste the link below. http://www.nicwa.org/policy/law/adoption_safe/asfa-issues.pdf

Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act

In Module 2, you also learned about the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act, which was signed into law in 2008.

For review, Fostering Connections sought to improve child welfare services in the following areas:

 Improving support for kinship and family care  Supporting older youth  Coordinating health care services for children and youth in care  Improving educational stability for children and youth in care  Re-funded adoption incentives and payments  Providing IV-E funding directly to tribes  Requires reasonable efforts to place siblings together and to ensure visitation  Allows states to “opt-in” Title IV-E foster care for youth to age 21

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 67 The broadening of children eligible for adoption assistance is a major change. Prior to the Fostering Connections Act, adoption assistance was tied to the IV-E requirements that a child was eligible for AFDC according to the 1996 standards.

Under Fostering Connections, these requirements will be removed. Beginning in 2009, children age 16 and older, those that have spent 60 or more consecutive months in foster care, and siblings of a child meeting the previous two conditions became eligible for IV-E adoption assistance regardless of their pre-care family income as a result of eliminating the link to the 1996 AFDC standard, provided other eligibility criteria are met.

Another major provision of Fostering Connections is strengthening relative placements, including:

 Subsidized guardianship for relative guardianship if states opt-in (currently is not available in Minnesota)  Identification of and notification to relatives about the child’s need for placement  Allows variances in licensing rules for relative foster care caregivers for non-safety issues

Fostering Connections also strengthened tribal control of Indian children through providing direct access to Title IV-E funds.

A comprehensive website with information and resources on the Fostering Connections law is available at http://www.fosteringconnections.org/

Permanency

For many people, “permanency” is equal to adoption. However, according to the Adoption and Safe Families Act, permanency options include:

 Reunification  Transfer of Permanent Legal and Physical Custody (TPLPC) (commonly referred to as legal guardianship outside of MN)  Adoption  Permanent placement with a relative  Another planned permanent living arrangement, or APPLA

 Reunification  Adoption (including customary adoption)  Transfer of legal custody to a relative  Other permanency options

In addition, as we have already learned, customary adoption is a permanency option for children identified as eligible under the Indian Child Welfare Act.

For reflection:

 How do you think about permanency?  When the word “permanency” is mentioned, what initially comes to mind?  What has influenced how you define permanency?

Placement decisions

In Minnesota, placement decisions for children in foster, adoptive or TPLPC placements must be focused on the child’s best interests, not for the parents or the agency’s interests.

Minnesota Statutes section 260C.212 was amended after August 2012 and now requires that agencies first make an individualized determination of the child’s needs, based on the best interest factors, then assess how a prospective placement option will best meet those child’s identified needs.

The factors to be considered in making an individual determination of a child’s needs are:

1. The child’s current functioning and behaviors 2. The child’s medical needs 3. The child’s educational needs 4. The child’s developmental needs 5. The child’s history and past experience 6. The child’s religious and cultural needs

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 69 7. The child’s connection with a community, school and church (synagogue, mosque, temple or other religious community) 8. The child’s interests and talents 9. The child’s relationship to current caretakers, parents, siblings and relatives 10. The child’s reasonable preference, if the court, or other child placing agency in the case of a voluntary placement, deems a child to be of sufficient age to express preferences

For each child, every placement decision and must be documented in the child’s file, including how the specific home or facility is consistent with the child’s best interest according to these placement factors. This documentation is best completed in the child’s out-of-home placement plan.

These factors are not weighted. In other words, an assessment of the child’s needs in each of these placement factors need to be considered in whole.

This is an area where worker bias may come in to play as each worker may have their own beliefs about which needs should be prioritized.

In our next in-class module we will discuss placement decisions in much more depth, including how to make appropriate placement decisions when there are competing priorities, such as relative placement versus sibling placement.

Family Group Decision Making

Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) is a model in which child welfare professionals bring together a child’s family and extended network in order to make decisions about how best to care and protect the child.

The Family Group Decision Making model originated in New Zealand as an approach with indigenous families involved in child welfare.

In Minnesota, Family Group Decision Making meetings are facilitated by trained coordinators who help guide and facilitate the family’s discussion and decisions about protecting and keeping the child safe.

The MN Department of Human Services has created a document outlining the core values and practice tenets of FGDM.

 Children have a right to maintain their kinship and cultural connections throughout their lives  Children and their parents belong to a wider family system that both nurtures them and is responsible for them  The family group, rather than the agency, is the context for child welfare and child protection resolutions  All families are entitled to the respect of state agencies, and program specialists need to make extra efforts to convey respect to those who are poor, socially excluded, marginalized, or lack power or access to resources and services  State agencies have responsibility to recognize, support and build the family group’s capacity to protect and care for their young relatives  Family groups know their own histories, and use that information to construct thorough plans  Active family group participation and leadership is essential for good outcomes for children, but power imbalances between family groups and child protection agency personnel must first be addressed  State agencies have responsibility to defend family groups from unnecessary intrusion and to promote their growth and strengths.

Family Group Decision Making provides families the opportunity to make decisions on behalf of their relative child, empowering the family and making the family the key agent in caring for and protecting the child, rather than the child welfare agency.

More information about Family Group Decision Making in Minnesota, including contact information for independent facilitators in the state is available through the link below.

https://edocs.dhs.state.mn.us/lfserver/Legacy/DHS-5421-ENG

Financial assistance for permanency placements vary depending on the type of permanency placement.

Adoption Assistance

Adoption assistance, monthly stipends to help adoptive families offset the cost of care for children adopted from the foster care system, is available if the child or children that were adopted meet the criteria for Title IV-E Adoption Assistance. There is also stated funded adoption assistance.

The subsidies are distributed through the state child welfare agency. Not every child eligible for adoption assistance receives money. The following resources are available for more information about adoption assistance in Minnesota.

State Adoption Assistance Contact Person

Tamera VanMoer (policy questions for initial Adoption Assistance eligibility) Department of Human Services PO Box 64944 St. Paul MN 55164-0944 Phone: 651-431-4989 Fax: 651-431-7491 E-mail: [email protected]

Paulette Lonzo (policy questions for Adoption Assistance) Department of Human Services PO Box 64944 St. Paul MN 55164-0944 Phone: 651-431-4716 Fax: 651-431-7491 E-mail: [email protected]

Josh Kroll NACAC 970 Raymond Ave, Suite 106 St. Paul, MN 55114-1149 Phone: 651-644-3036 or 800-470-6665 Fax: 651-644-9848 E-mail: [email protected]

For relatives who are considering adopting a relative child, the Minnesota Kinship Caregiver’s Association has developed a fact sheet about adoption assistance. You can find the Adoption Assistance Fact sheet at http://www.mkca.org/documents/AdoptionAssistance FactSheet.pdf.

Relative Custody Assistance

Relatives who become a child’s guardian under a transfer of permanent legal and physical custody may be eligible for financial assistance to care for their relative child. Depending on income, the family may be eligible for Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP) child-only grant.

If the child qualifies as a special needs child, the relative caregivers may be eligible for Relative Custody Assistance. More information about Relative Custody Assistance is available at https://edocs.dhs.state.mn.us/lfserver/Legacy/DHS-4769-ENG.

ICPC – Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children

Children are sometimes placed for foster care or adoption across state borders, and the policies that govern the adoption of children across state lines are called the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children (ICPC) laws.

As you learned in Module 1, the ICPC is a statutory agreement between each U.S. state, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands that certain requirements will be met before a child can be placed out of one state (or jurisdiction in the case of District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands) and moved to another. Minnesota Statutes section 260.851 regulates interstate placements.

The purpose of the compact is to make sure that the placement where the child is proposed to be moved is deemed safe and appropriate and that the individual or placing entity is ready to assume legal and financial responsibility for the child prior to the child’s placement.

The MN DHS website on ICPC has many resources, including checklists for workers for foster care, adoption and residential care placements, recommended timelines for placements, and required forms.

The first is from the MN Department of Human Services at http://www.dhs.state.mn.us/main/idcplg?IdcService=GET_DYNAMIC_CONVERSI ON&RevisionSelectionMethod=LatestReleased&dDocName=id_000157.

The second resource is from the Association of Administrators of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children has a website dedicated to helping people understand the ICPC law and best practice recommendations. The website is at http://icpc.aphsa.org/Home/home_news.asp.

For reflection

In thinking about the information you have just learned in this module, think about two to three thoughts or questions that you would like to discuss in our next module. In particular, we would like to discuss how the relational worldview, child welfare policies and process applies to your own practice as mental health, adoption, permanency or child welfare practitioners.

Conclusion

This concludes our self-guided session introducing you to the child welfare process, policies, working with Indian children and families and the Relational Worldview. At our next in-person session we will delve more deeply into many of these subjects. In particular, we will focus on placement and permanency decisions.

There is a misconception that permanency decisions and placements are the easier tasks in the child welfare process. However, permanency placement decisions are difficult and come with their own challenges for children, permanency caregivers and adoptive parents, and the professionals who work with these families.

Next time we will focus more in depth on sibling placements, separation and visitation, relative search and engagement, recruitment efforts, the matching process and compliance with the Multiethnic Placement Act/Interethnic Provisions.

Readings

Bear, C. (May 12, 2008). American Indian boarding schools haunt many. National Public Radio. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16516865.

Brave Heart, M.Y.H. (1998). The return to the sacred path: Healing the historical trauma and historical unresolved grief response among the Lakota through a psychoeducational group intervention. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 68:3, 287-305.

Brave Heart, M.Y.H. (1999). Oyate Ptayela: Rebuilding the Lakota nation through addressing historical trauma among Lakota parents Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 2:1-2, 109-126.

Brave Heart, M. Y. H. (2000). Wakiksuyapi: Carrying the historical trauma of the Lakota. Tulane Studies in Social Welfare, 21-22, 245-266.

Chibnall, S., Dutch, N.M., Jones-Harden, B., Brown, A., Gourdine, R., Smith, J., et al. (2003). Children of color in the child welfare system: Perspectives from the child welfare community. Washington, DC: US Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau. Retrieved from www.childwelfare.gov/pubs.otherpubs/children/children.pdf.

Child Welfare Information Gateway (n.d.). Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Retrieved from http://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/courts/icwa.cfm.

Cross, S.B., Kaye, E., & Ratnofsky, A.C. (1992). A report on the maltreatment of children with disabilities. Washington, DC: Prepared by Westat, Inc., and James Bell Associates for the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Cross, T. (1997). Understanding the relational worldview in Indian families. Pathways Practice Digest, 12:4. Retrieved from http://www.nicwa.org/services/techassist/worldview/worldview.htm.

Drake, B., Jolley, J.M., Lanier, P., Flue, J., Barth, R.P. & Jonson-Reid, M. (2011). Racial Bias in Child Protection? A Comparison of Competing Explanations Using National Data. Pediatrics, 127:3. DOI: 10.1542/peds.2010-1710, retrieved at http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/127/3/471.

Duran, E. (2006). Healing the soul wound: Counseling with American Indians and other Native peoples. New York: Columbia University.

Duran, E., Duran, B., Brave Heart, M.Y.H., Yellow Horse-Davis, S. (1998). Healing the American Indian soul wound. In Danieli, Y. (Ed.). International handbook of multigenerationalegacies of trauma. The plenum series on stress and coping, 341-354. New York: Plenum Press.

Harness, S.D. (2008). Mixing cultural identities through transracial adoption: Outcomes of the Indian Adoption Project (1958-1967). Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen.

© 2012 Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare 76 Hogan, M. and Blanchard, D. (n.d.). A family guide to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). Retrieved from http://www.ombudsfamilies.state.mn.us/Links_and_Resources.html.

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