IndianChild Welfare
Indian Child Welfare
The mission of the Shawnee Tribe Indian Child Welfare program is to restore and strengthen Native American Families.
To this end, we are committed to providing family centered strength-based services. Keeping with the Indian Child Welfare Act, the Shawnee Tribe believes that children have the right to be raised in their own families, communities, and culture. We also believe that families are the primary source of love and affection for their children and their first and most effective connection to their culture.
We believe that all families have the right to self-determination. Our involvement with the families is to support, encourage, guide, and enhance the strengths that each family already has. In-home services, follow up, and referrals are all vital resources to the family’s success. Safety and permanency of our Shawnee children is paramount. The well-being of the children and their families is the driving force of service delivery. Stable families and happy children result in healthy communities. To this end, we will strive to improve program services, and the overall child welfare system of the Shawnee Tribe.
Preserving Safe
& Stable Families
Funding for the PSSF Program is authorized by Title IV, Part B(2), of the Social Security Act (as amended by The Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, P.L. 109-432, effective June 20, 2007). More information about Title IVB can be found at www.acf.gov.
Title IV, Part B, subpart 2 is intended to enable States to develop and establish, or expand, and to operate coordinated programs of community-based family support services, family preservation services, time-limited family reunification services, and adoption promotion and support services.
These services are supposed to prevent child maltreatment among families at risk through the provision of supportive family services, to assure children’s safety within the home and preserve intact families in which children have been maltreated when the family’s problems can be addressed effectively, to address the problems of families whose children have been placed in foster care so that reunification may occur in a safe and stable manner in accordance with the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, and to support adoptive families by providing support services as necessary so that they can make a lifetime commitment to their children.
In operating its PSSF Program, the Shawnee Tribe’s services are required to satisfy the intentions of Oklahoma’s Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 by directly providing services to children and by providing educational and informational activities that improve children’s welfare. Because the funding is state-based, a tribe can serve only residents of the state in which it is headquartered. This is the reason why PSSF funding is available only to Oklahoma residents, and why direct services are available only to Shawnee Tribe members.
Hailey
Welfare Director