State-Tribal Partnerships to Implement Best Practices in Indian Child Welfare

This NOFO has been modified to clarify instructions for submitting a Letter of Intent. Changes have been made to Sections IV.2. and IV.4. - This NOFO has been modified to clarify instructions for submitting a Letter of Intent. Changes have been made to Sections IV.2. and IV.4. American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) children are nearly 3 times more likely to enter foster care, compared to non-Native children. These five year grants are intended to generate evidence for how best to effectively implement child welfare practices and ongoing active efforts to maintain AI/AN families by funding state and tribal partnerships to jointly design and operate Indian child welfare best practice implementation demonstration sites. The evidence generated and lessons learned through this effort are intended to contribute to implementation efforts nationally to help maintain and preserve AI/AN families and allow their children to remain connected to their communities and cultures. The purpose of this notice of funding opportunity is to create and implement intergovernmental partnership models to improve implementation of child welfare best practices that are culturally appropriate for federally recognized AI/AN children to prevent maltreatment, removal from families and communities, and improve safety, permanency, and well-being. Recipients will serve as demonstration sites to design and implement projects to effectively implement culturally appropriate best practices in Indian child welfare, including research and evaluation of improvements in child welfare practice, Indian child welfare codes, legal and judicial processes, case monitoring, case planning, data collection, in-home family preservation services, infrastructure, and systems change. Partnerships must include the state Court Improvement Program, the state child welfare agency, and one or more tribal governments or tribal consortia including corresponding tribal court(s). The "Tribal government" partner(s) may be tribal child welfare agencies where appropriate under tribal law or custom.Effective culturally appropriate best practices for implementation require a high degree of collaboration between state and tribal courts and Indian child welfare agencies. Thus, both states and tribes must identify, build, and enhance necessary capacities. State/tribal collaborations will work together to craft solutions for longstanding challenges to providing effective best practices in Indian child welfare in ways that work best for their communities. This notice of funding opportunity is intended to encourage state and tribal governments to work together to find creative, common-sense ways to meet the needs of AI/AN families with culturally appropriate best practices in Indian child welfare, with active efforts to retain or reunite Indian children with family as the "gold standard" for best Indian child welfare practice. The grant also provides an important opportunity for states and tribes to build or strengthen relationships of trust by working together toward common family preservation goals. As part of the project, recipients may also consider the role of civil legal services in implementation efforts. Assessment of the effectiveness and/or need for legal representation to parties in Indian child welfare cases may be included in project work, as may provision of direct civil legal services, to the extent that such legal services are an identified part of a pilot or practice model to be tested.For purposes of this notice of funding opportunity, "Tribal courts" are defined consistent with the Bureau of Indian Affairs regulations as "a court with jurisdiction over child custody proceedings and which is either a Court of Indian Offenses, a court established and operated under the code or custom of an Indian tribe, or any other administrative body of a tribe which is vested with authority over child custody proceedings.