While doing research to keep up to date on the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), I’m reminded of just how complicated an ICWA case can be. Starting in 1978 the Federal Government passed the ICWA to empower tribes with jurisdiction over Native American children both on the reservations and off when it comes to foster care and adoption because native children were being taken from their communities and placed with non-native families at an alarmingly high rate.
When it comes to ICWA cases, managing the connection between tribal courts and state courts is no small feat and even more important is managing and meeting the needs of the children themselves who are the main focus of these cases. We here at Handel have worked for years to make the case management side of that process as simple and streamlined as possible. We started this effort by helping enrollment departments build full and accurate family trees, enabling the tribe to always know of foster-parent potentials and this helps the children stay not only in the child’s tribe, but also closer to his or her own family.
Next, our system helps keep accurate and complete address and contact information for individuals and families enrolled in the tribe. As a central database accessible by different departments, RiteTrack stores all contact information in one place eliminating the problem of duplicate and/or outdated records, and RiteTrack will automatically verify addresses by confirming that a physical address exists for any address put into the system. Thus, all member contact records for the tribe stay accurate and up to date.
These features enable RiteTrack to provide, for example, complete tracking of all interactions between tribal social services staff and involved family members. It also enables complete and accurate record keeping of all notes, referrals, hearings, investigations, interviews and home studies. RiteTrack does this though a very thorough case flow which enables a case worker to easily manage such important cases without having to worry about missing any major or minor case milestones. All of these features ensure that case workers have the information necessary to provide the needed security and services to the families they serve, especially for Indian Child Welfare cases.
-Evan Binder-