compliance

Article on California’s Report on ICWA (non) Compliance

Kate Fort

Report: Compliance with Indian Child Welfare Act Spotty

The report found that state and local agencies still struggle with the law, according to Kimberly Cluff, a task force member and staff member of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians. She said the tribes feel like they’re at “ground zero.”

“The law provides the tribes and, more importantly, tribal children with a bunch of rights, but if the tribe doesn’t know the child is in foster care, or if nobody asks the question of family tribal status, then all those protections are lost,” Cluff said. “If we don’t know that child is an Indian, we can’t protect them as an Indian and it’s just somewhat shocking that 40 years after the passing of this law, we’re still talking about basic implementation.”

A copy of the Report is here.

NCJFCJ Toolkit for Monitoring ICWA Compliance

Kate Fort

Here.

The NCJFCJ is committed to helping state courts achieve full ICWA compliance. A new resource is now available to the courts (or Court Improvement Programs) to help achieve this goal. Measuring Compliance with the Indian Child Welfare Act: An Assessment Toolkit, provides concrete tools and recommendations for the state courts to assess their current compliance with ICWA. The Toolkit identifies strengths and weaknesses of different data collection approaches, provides sample tools or questions for the sites, and identifies resources and examples of putting this into practice. If you have any questions or would like additional information about measuring ICWA compliance in your jurisdiction, you can e-mail the research team at research@ncjfcj.org.