I am a foster parent in South Dakota.  If you believe everything you hear on NPR (and normally, I do), you would  think I have a pitchfork in one hand with which to torture my foster children and a bag of money in the other for all the cash I make. 

Actually, the NPR reports don’t really target foster families.  I’m just a bit defensive, as a foster mom and as a South Dakotan. 

If you’re not aware, last week NPR ran a three-part series on the South Dakota foster care system which, it alleges, violates federal law in removing kids from Native families and in placing them in non-family, non-Native foster homes.  The reports also discuss federal dollars which incentivize this removal and no-bid contracts for foster care services which generally are awarded to the same facility which used to employ our governor.  So there’s a lot in there that makes my dear home look pretty bad. 

I have a complicated relationship with South Dakota.  I love it, and it drives me crazy.  It’s so Republican that in 2008, the only race in which I voted for a winner was the presidential race.  The number of Democrats in our legislature barely breaks into the double digits.  But I can’t help but love it.  It’s rugged and beautiful, and the people are so interesting and hard-working they’ll usually win you over.  We have a difficult past (like every state), and lots of big challenges, but we do our best. 

That’s why I feel like the singling out of South Dakota is a little unfair.  I think most people understand that child welfare systems all over the country are complex systems where public policy collides with personal beliefs and financial considerations, where underappreciated and undercompensated workers try to do the best in very complicated situations.  No one can deny that most reports of child abuse or neglect are difficult situations, filled with imperfect humans, each with a complicated range of self-interest and personal biases and shame and uncertainty, and a fragile child subject to the whims of the adults around him/her with various levels of stability and functionality.  The outrage I’ve heard from lots of people who would never venture into what may be the most complicated situation imaginable – allegations that a parent neglects his/her child – is particularly frustrating.  A state agency’s mission that is, effectively, getting involved in the intimate lives of families is certain to implicate people’s egos and  self-interest in myriad ways and and likely, therefore, to result in defensiveness on all sides. 

But these reports present a scary picture -- that the State of South Dakota is violating a federal law intended to reverse decades of removing Indian kids from their homes by taking away Indian children based on sometimes thin allegations of neglect or abuse only to place them off the reservation with white families or in group homes.  That this might be happening in my state (or in any state) is something worth investigating.  And not by some NPR reporters who seem to ignore whole parts of the story that don't jive with their narrative (for example, the central role that tribal courts can play in DSS cases, the difference between "no-bid" contracts and those requests for proposals that only garner one proposal, the reality that being lieutenant governor of a small state means making a living at another career, the fact that some referrals may be for neglect but that abuse is often uncovered later on once the kids are in care).  While we can definitely poke holes in the NPR stories - and there are lots of gaps and misconceptions that many others have pointed out - I don't think defensiveness is what will help our children or our reputation, particularly with tribal members.  This is SD's problem, so let's recognize the possibility that these serious accusations would be devastating if they are true, launch our own investigation, and figure out what is true and what can be done to make our system better.  

 The report alleges that there are Native foster families that are going unused.  If that's true, we should fix that.  Based on what I've been told, the state needs lots more foster homes of every sort, and they're always looking for new families who will foster kids.  If there are structural barriers to licensing foster homes on reservations and/or approving families to serve as kinship placements (the NPR report said the Native homes were "ICWA licensed," but I know you have to be DSS licensed to get kids from the state), we should definitely improve this.  If some social workers aren't aware that many Native families often have a hodgepodge of adults and kids living in one household, or that they may eat their dinner at the neighbor's house, and if some workers get concerned about things that are really a function of their culturally-based prejudices, then we should work on that.  We should make sure the workers can distinguish abuse and neglect from their own preconceived ideas of what a "normal" family looks like at least as well as outraged commenters on the NPR stories who assume the worst about South Dakotans and the best about themselves (I got a little tired of the sanctimonious voices on the internet who are certain that they could separate neglect from cultural differences despite never setting foot on a reservation).  If we need to figure out a way to use kinship placements in ways that are less disruptive to the children, let's figure that out.  We're smart people.  We can do this.