National Indian Child Welfare Association

TO PROMOTE THE WELFARE AND WELL-BEING OF ALL AMERICAN INDIAN AND ALASKA NATIVE CHILDREN AND FAMILIES

Every Native child must have access to community-based, culturally appropriate services that help th

Goal One: NICWA provides community-based, culturally specific technical assistance to tribal child welfare programs to decolonize programs to better meet the needs of their member families.

Goal Two: NICWA upholds the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), a federal law protecting the well-being of Native children and families. It strengthens family integrity and stability within communities.

Goal Three: NICWA launched a pilot study of our culturally based parenting curriculum, Positive Indian Parenting (PIP), to build an evidence base for PIP under the Family First Prevention Services Act criteria.

NICWA recognizes the importance of providing employees with professional development opportunities in a variety of forms that increase their skills and enhance their contributions to the organization and are in line with our mission. Providing professional development to our employees is an investment in their career and NICWA's future. NICWA may contribute up to $600 per year toward a regular, full-time employee’s approved professional development activities. This amount may be pro-rated for regular part-time employees. It is the employee's responsibility to seek out opportunities. Professional development opportunities may include, but are not limited to, attendance at seminars, workshops, cultural activities, and webinars; participating in continuing education to maintain licensure/credentials; individual coursework toward an advance degree; pursuing opportunities to build leadership skills and/or enhance professional effectiveness; and membership fees to professional organizations.

To best meet the training needs of frontline tribal child welfare and behavioral health workers, NICWA’s primary response to the COVID-19 pandemic was to transition in-person trainings to virtual delivery, prioritizing Positive Indian Parenting and Working with Substance-Abusing Families curricula. At the outset of the pandemic, staff began working remotely and converted our in-person annual conference for 1,500 pre-registered tribal social service workers to a virtual event with only two and a half weeks of planning time. This event provided information and a sense of connection to those struggling with isolation while responding to the unfolding pandemic. NICWA advocated for Indian Country funding and policy priorities in congressional relief and recovery packages and worked with the administration to loosen regulations to facilitate services to families, e.g., the ability to use existing child welfare funding to purchase personal protective equipment (PPE) for workers and families, as well as to purchase cell phones and/or increase cell phone plans to accommodate visitation between children in out-of-home placement and their families. NICWA developed a webpage to curate resources for tribes including information about federal and private funding sources and best practices for adapting service delivery. NICWA also hosted eight webinars about the child welfare response to the pandemic to gather information from workers in the field and share emerging best practices for service delivery. NICWA engaged the press in talking about what the pandemic means for Native communities (for example, CBS This Morning video diaries of child welfare workers and a blog to highlight the impact of COVID-19 on grandparents raising their grandchildren) in partnership with Generations United.