Long-Term Foster Care in an American Indian Cultural Environment

Today’s guest blogger is Caleb Williamson

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is a social welfare policy that was established by congress in 1978. The law was initially created in response to the high numbers of American Indian youth being removed from their homes and placed in non-Indian foster and adoptive homes (25 U.S.C. 1901-63). The policy aims to establish minimum federal standards for American Indian child removal from their families and cultures of origin. Further, the ICWA seeks to ensure culturally congruent foster and adoptive placement options for American Indian children. Although ICWA was enacted in 1978, providing culturally appropriate permanency for American Indian children remains a contentious issue.

In 2010 the peer reviewed journal Children and Youth Services Review published a paper crafted by Susan Quash-Mah, Jean Stockard, Deborah Johnson-Shelton, and Ryann Crowley entitled “Fulfilling the Hope of ICWA: The Role of Community Context”. In this paper the authors contend that long-term foster care provided in an American Indian Cultural Environment (AICE) can represent a culturally appropriate alternative form of permanency for American Indian children. Specifically, the authors hypothesized that children in counties with the strongest American Indian Cultural Environment would have a greater likelihood of experiencing an alternative form of permanency, that AICE were more probable for children if their home tribes were in the county of placement, and the relationships would maintain even when child demographics were controlled. The inquiry focused on administrative data from 1,600 American Indian children in foster care placements from four separate counties in California over a five year span. Data analysis supported the hypotheses of the study: American Indian children in counties with strongest AICE had fewer and more sustained out-of-home placements (Quash-Mah, Stockard, Johnson-Shelton, & Crowley, 2010).

The strength of this paper is found in its simple yet powerful understanding of ICWA. It highlights that mainstream notions of permanencey, which place a premium on adoption and the nuclear family, are indeed expressions of cultural values. But whose cultural values? In an American Indian Cultural Environment, long-term foster care in-and-of itself is an expression of American Indian tradition, which extends the legacy of clan system practice. “Fulfilling the Hope of ICWA: The Role of Community Context” lays the foundation upon which future research will provide more extensive and complex inquiry into the ways in which child welfare systems can provide effective and culturally appropriate services to clients.

Quash-Mah, S., Stockard, J., Johnson-Shelton, D., & Crowley, R. (2010). Fulfilling the hope of ICWA: The role of community context. Children and Youth Services Review, 896-901.