Direct Tribal Access to Title IV-E Would Provide New Resource Opportunities

for Indian Communities

April 2005

Legislation (S. 672) that would end the disparate treatment of Indian children under the Social Security Act’s Title IV-E Foster Care and Adoption Assistance programs by providing them with the same services as are currently provided to all other eligible children in the United States was introduced on March 17, 2005 by Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR). Senator Smith is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over the bill. He was joined as co-sponsors by Senators Baucus (D-MT), McCain (R-AZ), Bingaman (R-NM), Johnson (D-SD), Cantwell (D-WA), Cochran (R-MS) and Domenici (R-NM). The text of the legislation was also included in the Senate Finance Committee’s welfare reauthorization bill (S. 667, Section 403), which the Committee approved on March 9. The welfare bill is the most likely route for the tribal IV-E legislation to be approved by the Senate at this point. There’s no word on when the Senate will schedule a vote on the welfare reauthorization legislation.

Under the current law, tribes are not eligible to directly apply for or operate the Title IV-E program without an agreement with their state. This means that over 4,000 Indian children who are eligible for this federal entitlement program go without services, simply because they live on tribal lands. While approximately 70 tribes have been able to negotiate Title IV-E agreements with their states, the agreements are not mandatory and many times do not provide tribes with all the funding or flexibility available under Title IV-E.

The legislation would correct an oversight in this $7 billion annual program to allow tribes to directly apply to the federal government to operate the program. The legislation would also allow tribes to define their service area, use their own foster care standards, provide discretion to the Secretary of Health and Human Services to modify program requirements and tribal match rates, allow tribal consortia to apply and develop new or continue existing tribal-state IV-E agreements. You can obtain a copy of the legislation and a description at http://www.nicwa.org/legislation/.

Why Is This important?

In 1980, Congress enacted the Foster Care and Adoption Assistance Act (Title IV-E), which provides entitlement funding for foster care and adoption assistance services for income-eligible children who are placed by state agencies or public agencies with which the state has an agreement. Funding is also provided to states to administer these programs and provide training. Children who are under the jurisdiction of their tribes and are placed by tribal courts and agencies were left out of consideration for access to these important funds.

Having direct access to these funds would provide new resource opportunities to tribes and improve outcomes for tribal children and families. With new funding under Title IV-E, tribal communities that are using their existing funding (tribal or federal) to support foster care and adoption assistance could redistribute these existing funds to other child welfare services where unmet needs exist. This could include prevention efforts aimed at reducing the overall number of children coming into tribal care and services to strengthen tribal families where children are at risk of being removed from their homes or could be reunified after placement. Without access to Title IV-E funds, tribes are forced to stretch already limited resources to cover some of the most expensive of all child welfare services—foster care and adoptive placements. In addition, having direct access to Title IV-E, as opposed to relying only on tribal/state agreements, would give tribes more authority and stability in their child welfare programming.

Overall, it will be important for tribal advocates to voice their support for the legislation to their United States Senators and House of Representatives members if the legislation is to be passed this year. The bill provides tribal governments the opportunity to apply for the Title IV-E program and receive reimbursement for eligible foster care and adoption assistance services. This is one of the few open entitlement programs left among the federal government’s sources of child welfare funding. The National Congress of American Indians, regional inter-tribal organizations across the United States, Child Welfare League of America, and the American Public Human Services Association all support tribes receiving direct Title IV-E funding.

For more information on this topic, please contact Chey Clifford-Stoltenberg, NICWA senior government affairs associate, at (503) 222-4044 or chey@nicwa.org.