Our Priorities
Poverty ≠ Neglect
Meeting Basic Human Needs to address the overrepresentation of racialized children in the child welfare system.
A disproportionate number of Black and Native American children and families are experiencing the trauma of family separation due to poverty and inability to provide for basic human needs.
Members of the Coordinating Committee have led the CWARE Collaborative in the creation of a multifaceted advocacy strategy that prevent unnecessary foster care involvement for Black and Native American families by
- Strengthening parents, caregivers, and youth’s access to legal information and advice,
- Growing communities’ ability to meet families’ basic human needs,
- Requiring state agencies to reliably and equitably differentiate between abuse, neglect that is poverty based and unwilling caregiver
- Ban child welfare agencies from removing children from their families due to poverty.
Protect and Strengthen ICWA and Tribal Families
Strengthening and Protecting the Indian Child Welfare Act and Tribal Families
Native American children and families are being disproportionately torn apart and traumatized due to agencies’ failure to comply with ICWA, which is a federal law that needs to be strengthened. ICWA is likely to continue to face attacks to weaken the limited protections that the law provides to Native American children, families, tribes, and communities.
Led by the Coordinating Committee, CWARE Collaborative has developed a strategic plan that will:
- Grow state agencies’ awareness of ICWA’s requirements and their confidence in their ability to implement ICWA,
- Require states to follow ICWA and have accountability for this requirement
- Educate groups outside of the child welfare sector about the implications of ICWA being weakened or overturned, and
- Encourage the creation of other policies and laws that respond and reflect the lived experiences of people in these