Coping with Crisis, Confronting COVID19: Native American Grandfamilies Hit the Hardest
By Sarah Kastelic and Donna Butts
Sonya Begay, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, is one of 2.4 million grandparents raising their grandchildren. It’s not easy. For her, “navigating the child welfare system was really harrowing.” When her grandchildren were removed from her son and daughter-in-law because of alcohol and drug use, the state didn’t contact Begay, who said, “I didn’t know where my grandkids were taken; I just knew they were in custody.”
Unfortunately, compared to all other racial or ethnic groups in the United States, American Indian and Alaska Native children are more likely to live in grandfamilies (aka grandparents and other relatives raising grandchildren, kinship care). Native children are dramatically overrepresented both in kinship foster care and in grandfamilies who live outside the formal foster care system.
Because of the opioid crisis, the US has seen a dramatic growing reliance by the foster care system on relatives, from 24 percent of child placements in 2008 to 32 percent in 2018[i]. The COVID-19 pandemic is the latest crisis to disproportionately impact Native peoples, and more grandfamilies are coming together every day as a result.
There is a long and proud tradition of extended family relationships and kinship care in Native cultures, and the disproportionate number of American Indian and Alaska Native grandfamilies reflect that strength.
But the substantial overrepresentation of Native children in foster care also reflects racial and cultural biases, racism, and lack of understanding of their strengths. During the current pandemic, adults over the age of 60 and people with compromised immune systems are asked to isolate themselves and not have contact with children.
For grandparents like Begay, this ask is impossible even as Native families are being disproportionally impacted by the pandemic. The rates of infection and death are staggering. For example, as of early May 2020 on the Navajo Nation reservation, the mortality and infection rates are higher than most states. More recently, spikes in COVID-19 infection rates have been linked to multigenerational households.
Research clearly shows that when children must be taken into care, they do better in grandfamilies. Like first responders, relative caregivers are the first line of defense for children — the buffer keeping children out of the child welfare system.
But for Native caregivers, like Begay, the systems in place do not build on her culture’s tradition of extended family relationships and kinship care. Instead, American Indians and Alaska Natives must navigate the many silos that impact grandfamilies — such as child welfare, aging, education, and housing — seeking culturally appropriate services. As dual citizens of the United States and their sovereign tribe, and residents of the state in which they live, the systems of supports accessible to Native peoples are complex and often fragmented.
Generations United and the National Indian Child Welfare Association developed a resource to help agencies and organizations best serve Native grandfamilies. The toolkit provides concrete tools to encourage culturally appropriate services that include recommendations to policymakers to:
· Fully implement the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and ensure that (1) grandparents are notified early when relative children are placed out of home and (2) ICWA’s placement preferences are followed.
· Make tribes eligible to receive funding directly under the Social Services Block Grant. Tribal governments receive disproportionately less funding for vulnerable populations than states and this is one of the largest sources of federal child welfare funds.
· Invest in tribal and state kinship navigator programs and address barriers to getting access to Title IV-E funds (evidence-based requirements) for programs rooted in tribal cultural practices.
· Encourage the states that have not taken the federal option to offer a Guardianship Assistance Program to do so because of its importance as a permanency path for American Indian and Alaska Native children.
· Encourage state and county child welfare agencies to contract with urban Indian organizations to provide services and supports to Native grandfamilies.
We also urge the incoming administration to go even further by:
· Having authentic engagement of grandfamily voices. Create an advisory board and process for regular listening sessions with members of grandfamilies including families raising children inside and outside of the child welfare system. Ensuring the voices of caregivers and young people with lived experience in grandfamilies is critical to ensuring effective policy and practice reach those who need it.
· Recognizing the effects of historic and current systemic racism. Discrimination in state child welfare systems has created serious roadblocks to improving outcomes for Black and American Indian and Alaska Native children. Relative care providers also experience affects from systemic racism in state child welfare systems. Solutions to improve conditions for Black and Native children must incorporate ways to reduce racial inequities while protecting the unique political status of American Indian and Alaska Native children and their tribal governments.
· Developing and implementing a plan for addressing racial bias in child welfare and related systems and removing the executive order prohibiting training that teaches about systematic racism.
· Recognizing culture as a strength and protective factor in child welfare decisions. Culture is a well-known protective factor in helping parents and children avoid and heal from trauma. Federal policy solutions should not only emphasize trauma informed care, but the role of culture as a protective factor in child welfare interventions.
· Establish an independent, nonprofit-based National Grandfamilies Technical Assistance Center to provide expertise to programs and systems around the country, elevate effective strategies, facilitate learning across sectors and geographic areas, and help multiple systems coordinate their efforts to ensure the needs of grandfamilies are met during national emergencies. The Center should include expertise in working with tribal governments and culturally-based resources to assist tribal and urban Indian communities.
· Support Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Council Efforts and implement its recommendations. Support the federal Advisory Council on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren to implement the Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Act by engaging input from key federal agencies, tribal nations, a diverse group of grandfamily caregivers, birth parents, people raised in grandfamilies, and grandfamilies professionals through the Council and process for public input; promote broad and effective dissemination of the Council’s resources and its report to Congress; and develop a plan for implementation of report recommendations including continuing a working group of federal agencies to coordinate efforts to support grandfamilies across systems.
Grandfamilies are united not only by their love for and desire to protect their grandchildren but also by their perseverance, resilience, and determination. They deserve our respect and support now more than ever.
Sarah Kastelic is the executive director of the National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA)
Donna Butts is the executive director of Generations United
[i] U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Children’s Bureau. 2009. “The AFCARS report, Preliminary FY 2008 estimates (№16).” Accessed March 2020. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/afcarsreport16.pdf; and “The AFCARS report, Preliminary FY 2018 estimates (№26).” Accessed February 2020. www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/cb/afcarsreport26.pdf
