Conceptualizing a Trauma Informed Child Welfare System for Indian Country

Abstract

INTRO: Although elements of such a system are in place or ready to be implemented in a growing number of Native American a nd American Indian communities, comprehensive trauma-informed system s remain works in progress. Moreover, the work that lies ahead is not merely an implementation challenge. This work entails new organiz ational and institutional designs, and it depends on design-oriented architectures and leadership for their progressive improvement. As with a ll innovative designs, organizations need to be selectively restructured , and their workforces need to be reconfigured. What is more, worker s at all levels must adapt their performances—strategically, coherently, and synergistically as new designs are implemented and tested ( Baard et al., 2014). Perhaps above all, this design work is context-dependent . In other words, place matters, and so do the characteristics of the populations needing to be served alongside the ecologies of child w elfare organizations and their community partners. Nowhere ar e these several particularities more evident than in Indian Country. The ensuing analysis provides introductory details and a special focus on the design and development of trauma-informed systems in Indian Country. Because place matters (in this case, oft en-isolated and under-resourced reservation communities) and so do the p eople needing to be served (American Indian and Alaska Native childre n), trauma-informed systems for these special people in their somewha t unique locales must prioritize a fourth kind of intervention. Indigenous healing practices with hundreds of years of tradition must be pri oritized and incorporated as facilitators for culturally-competent pra ctice and also as safeguards against colonialism (Gray, Coates, Yellow Bir d, & Hetherington, 2013). The analysis begins with the conte xt of the child welfare system and a special focus on trauma in Indian Co untry and the child welfare ...