This Casey Family Programs report outlines strategies for keeping American Indian and Alaska Native children in tribal foster homes and approaches to find tribal parents for an “Indian child” under the Indian Child Welfare Act. The report emphasizes the importance for Native children to have connections with families sharing their same culture, especially in cases where the children are not in safe or healthy home environments.

This journal article presents data to illustrate how the death rate from opioids among Native Americans has risen significantly over the last 17 years. The authors also discuss tribal medical and legal responses to the opioid epidemic, including tribally-operated medication assisted therapies and drug diversion courts.

This program instruction revises and replaces NEW-ACF-PI 2011-01. It provides guidance on submission of program, financial, and audit reports covering the NEW program, replacing outdated directions from Program Instruction NEW-ACF-PI-2011-01. Native Employment Works (NEW) grantees are required to submit annual program and financial reports to the HHS and ACF. In addition, guidance is added regarding electronic filing of reports as directed by OGM-AT-13-01.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA), held the 2017 National Tribal Summit at the Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel in Arlington, Virginia on August 16-18, 2017. Sponsored by the Office of Family Assistance (OFA), the 2017 National Tribal TANF Summit brought together program administrators, stakeholders, and leaders. The event provided attendees with opportunities to interact with peers, hear from experts in the field, and share best practices and the latest self-sufficiency research, with the common goal of improving Tribal TANF programming to benefit families in need.

This report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development examines a survey of 1,340 American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) households in 38 tribal areas to assess housing conditions. The analysis uncovered that AIAN housing conditions were much worse than U.S. households, with overcrowding a severe issue in these communities. The report suggests that limited funding is a key reason for limited housing production among many tribes.

Through statistics gathered from American Indian and Alaskan Native children living on or near reservations and comparing them with general population statistics, this report describes the scope of hunger, obesity, and Type II diabetes rates. It also discusses how federal nutrition programs can improve the lives of children living in tribal lands.

This report provides an overview of the implementation of a cross-agency federal initiative led by the White House Rural Council called Rural IMPACT. The demonstration initiative aimed to address rural child poverty and improve mobility of families in rural and tribal communities through increased service delivery coordination. Drawing from other place-based initiatives, the demonstration focused on providing intensive technical assistance to ten sites chosen through a competitive process. Each site was to develop a two-generation program model that would be driven by a “backbone” agency and a team of key partners. This report highlights key practice elements needed for site success, which included tailored technical assistance, numerous committed partner organizations including families themselves, strong leadership support, and plans to encourage wider implementation of two-generation efforts.

This factsheet from the Office of Child Support Enforcement discusses how employers can most effectively interact with the more than 560 federally recognized American Indian/Alaska Native tribes in the U.S. It covers family structure, frequently asked questions around payments, and basics of tribal government structure. It also includes contact information for further questions.

This practice brief introduces the Tribal HPOG 2.0 evaluation, provides a summary of the findings of the Tribal HPOG 1.0 evaluation, and examines how the evaluation of the first program informed the second. The Tribal HPOG 2.0 program encourages individuals to enter the healthcare field through supporting demonstration projects that equip those individuals with the necessary education and training. It is the first in a series of briefs that will be disseminated to share lessons learned and findings from the program evaluation.

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with numerous risk behaviors and mental health outcomes among youth. This study examines the relationship between the number of types of exposures to ACEs and risk behaviors and mental health outcomes among reservation-based Native Americans. In 2011, data were collected from Native American (N = 288; 15-24 years of age) tribal members from a remote plains reservation using an anonymous web-based questionnaire. We analyzed the relationship between six ACEs, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, physical and emotional neglect, witness to intimate partner violence, for those <18 years, and included historical loss associated symptoms, and perceived discrimination for those <19 years; and four risk behavior/mental health outcomes: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, depression symptoms, poly-drug use, and suicide attempt. Seventy-eight percent of the sample reported at least one ACE and 40% reported at least two. The cumulative impact of the ACEs were significant (p < .001) for the four outcomes with each additional ACE increasing the odds of suicide attempt (37%), poly-drug use (51%), PTSD symptoms (55%), and depression symptoms (57%). To address these findings culturally appropriate childhood and adolescent interventions for reservation-based populations must be developed, tested and evaluated longitudinally. (author abstract)