The Tribal Training and Certification Partnership at UMD trains social workers who work with Native American families

David Cowardin | Nov 15, 2023 | DULUTH, MN

The Tribal Training and Certification Partnership at UMD trains social workers who work with Native American families.

In 1978, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) in response to Native American children being removed from their homes and placed in foster care at disproportionate rates.  Despite regulation, those rates have remained high.  Today in Minnesota, Native children are still 16 times more likely than white children to be placed in foster care.

To address the issue, a two-day training program on ICWA was formed at UMD: The Tribal Training and Certification Partnership (TTCP) trains incoming and current child protection workers in Minnesota to work with Native families better. “Since January of 2020, we have trained about 1600 county social workers,” said Larissa Littlewolf, associate director of the TTCP, and member of the Turtle Clan and Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.

The training is part of the Minnesota Child Welfare Training Academy. It begins with a historical context of the US government's interactions with Native families that have led to decades of trauma, followed by lessons on how to comply with ICWA. Eventually, all county social workers in Minnesota who work with child protection cases will be mandated to go through the training.

“We’re really working on the spirit of ICWA,” Littlewolf said. “Building relationships with families, meeting them where they’re at.”

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Related articles:

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Transforming child welfare
Using an indigenous lens
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Heart work: Training social workers to keep Native children home (MPR story)

A Plan To Train Child Welfare Workers on American Indian Rights

 

Farrah Mina interviews the women developing Minnesota's new effort to train all child welfare workers on American Indian rights in the system.

Less than 2% of Minnesota’s population is Native American, according to Census data. But the most recent federal child welfare data shows more than one-third of children in the state’s foster care system were identified as being at least part American Indian in 2019. The state dwarfs all others in terms of disproportionality when it comes to involving Native families in child welfare cases. 

GREAT NEWS: A Plan To Train Child Welfare Workers on American Indian Rights

Justice Department Sues South Dakota State Agency for Discrimination Against Native American Job Applicants at Pine Ridge Reservation

DOJ Sues S. Dakota DSS for Discrimination Against Tribal Job Applicants

Posted on November 4, 2015 by S. Donnelly | Turtle Talk

DOJ Press release here.

The Justice Department today filed a lawsuit against the South Dakota Department of Social Services (DSS) alleging that at its Pine Ridge Reservation Office, the state agency repeatedly discriminated against Native American job applicants because of their race, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota, alleges that in failing to select well-qualified Native American applicants for several positions in DSS’s Pine Ridge Reservation Office, the state agency engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination and violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal statute that prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and religion.

“Federal law provides all Americans with equal opportunity to compete for jobs on a level playing field free from racial discrimination,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta of the Civil Rights Division.  “When employers discriminate against qualified job applicants because of what they look like or where they come from, they violate both the values that shape our nation and the laws that govern it.”

U.S. v. S.D. DSS Complaint here.

According to the complaint, in October 2010, Cedric Goodman, a Native American with supervisory experience as a social worker, as well as several other well-qualified Native Americans, applied for an Employment Specialist position at DSS’s Pine Ridge Office.  The complaint alleges that after interviewing Goodman and the other Native American candidates who met the employer’s objective job qualifications, DSS removed the vacancy and hired no one.  The next day, however, DSS reopened the position and ultimately selected a white applicant with inferior qualifications and no similar work experience.  The complaint alleges that DSS discriminated against Goodman and other similarly-situated Native American applicants based on their race.
In addition, the complaint alleges that denying Goodman’s application was part of a pattern or practice of race discrimination by DSS, where the agency repeatedly removed job postings and used subjective, arbitrary hiring practices to reject qualified Native American applicants for Specialist positions.
Over a two year period beginning in 2010, DSS posted 18 Specialist vacancies for its Pine Ridge Reservation Office.  Even though the agency received nearly 40 percent of its applications from Native Americans, DSS hired 11 Whites and only one Native American, while removing six other openings entirely.