Form 1 Tribal Organizational Assessment Family Interview

THE PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT OF 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 60 minutes per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and reviewing the collection of information. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number.

Tribal Child Welfare Family Interview Protocol

Interviewer Name:	Interview Date:
Interviewee Name:	Interviewee Tribe:

1. Please talk about what it was like for you and your family to be involved with the child welfare program or what many people call “social services”.

2. What types of services did you receive to help you with the problems that caused you to be involved with social services?

• Do you know if you worked with someone from the BIA, state or Tribe?

3. How helpful were the services you received?

• If the services were helpful, what was it that made them work well for you and your family?

If the services were not helpful, what would have worked better for you?

4. Were you able to get all of the services you needed?

• What did you need that you didn’t get or wasn’t offered?

• Were there specific barriers that you feel prevented you from getting certain kinds of services (e.g., transportation, child care, paying for services)?

• How could the tribal child welfare program improve its services to families and children?

5. Were you included in the planning of your services?

• Did you have input into the planning of your services? What was this like?

• Did you participate in a meeting or meetings with social services and members of your family to make decisions as a group about things like the placement of your children, the services you needed and how family members could help you? (Some social services programs call these meetings Family Group Conferences or Team Decision-making Meetings.)

6. How respectful was your caseworker in attending to the cultural and spiritual needs of your family?

• Did your caseworker ask you about your tribal heritage and your involvement in cultural or spiritual traditions/practices?

• Were cultural traditions or practices that your family follows addressed in your service plan (e.g., attending ceremonies, respecting kinship relationships and roles)?

• What changes could be made to the way the child welfare program operates that would make it more sensitive to or respectful of your tribal culture?

7. Do you remember ever dealing with law enforcement (tribal, state/county, and/or federal law enforcement)? If so, please talk about your experience with law enforcement.

8. Thinking about your caseworker, what did he or she do well? What did he or she do that didn’t work well for you?

9. What are the most important things that you think the tribal child welfare program needs to know about the children and families it works with?