Two U.S. Senators are calling on the nonpartisan Congressional watchdog arm of government to look at the prevention of child abuse and neglect in Indigenous communities, and how the federal government can be a better partner to them.
“To best support Tribal child welfare programs, we need to better understand the common barriers Tribes face in accessing federal and state child welfare funding and technical assistance, the best practices that Tribal child welfare programs employ, and the gaps in federal data,” said the letter, sent today by U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Lisa Murkoswki (R-Alaska) to the Government Accountability Office, or GAO.
The request follows several recent actions by the Biden administration aimed at improving the connection of tribal child welfare systems to the federal government. Over the summer, the administration issued several clarifications around flexibility for tribes within the Family First Prevention Services Act, which permits the use of federal IV-E funding for the purpose of preventing foster care in some child welfare cases. The services that federal funds can be spent on are dictated by a tightly controlled federal clearinghouse. An update to the federal Child Welfare Policy Manual made clear that virtually any tribe has the flexibility to make cultural adaptations to the clearinghouse-approved programs.
And earlier this month, Biden finalized the rules for adding information about the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) to the annual collection of federal child welfare data, known as the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System. The decades-old law was passed at a time when a high rate of Indigenous children were taken from their families and placed in boarding schools or with white adoptive parents. The Biden administration also offered a long-sought apology for that dark era of child welfare.
The letter from Warren and Murkowski suggests concern that flexibility and data inclusion might not be of much help if tribes and communities are not getting the funding and resources necessary to act on them. They ask that GAO examine 15 different topics that probe the current use of maltreatment prevention by tribes; how the federal government could assist tribes in conducting evidence-based studies of promising cultural practices; and the limitations or challenges tribes experience in collecting child welfare data.
“The federal government has a responsibility to invest in Tribal child welfare programs and to not repeat the harms of the past. This research is critical to better understanding those programs’ urgent needs,” the letter concludes.