Understanding ICWA Part 1: Active Efforts, with Shannon Smith

On this week’s podcast we discuss a scandal that sparked new mandated reporting laws, the Biden administration’s kinship care ideas, and a new adoption information system in Ireland. 

Shannon Smith of Minnesota’s ICWA Law Center joins us to talk about the active efforts provision of the Indian Child Welfare Act something she sees in play everyday in one of America’s only ICWA courts. 

Reading Room

Mandatory Reporting Was Supposed to Stop Severe Child Abuse. It Punishes Poor Families Instead.
https://nbcnews.to/3yLi08p

CPS Workers Search Millions of Homes a Year. A Mom Who Resisted Paid a Price.
https://nbcnews.to/3TJcyeD

Can ‘Kinship Care’ Help the Child Welfare System? The White House Wants to Try
https://nyti.ms/3yKDJNV

Biden Proposes Major Spending Shifts to Prioritize Kin, Foster Care Prevention
https://bit.ly/3iL0U26

Prioritizing Kinship Care with Kim Clifton
https://bit.ly/3EvWFSb

 Irish Leader Apologizes for Adoptions That ‘Robbed Children’ of Their Identity
https://nyti.ms/3VBAhij

Ireland Opens Decades of Secret Records to Adoptees
https://nyti.ms/3Vyrtdi

A Seattle Agency Digs Deep into Unanswered Questions About Past Adoption Practices, and its Obligations to Families
https://bit.ly/30I2KLO

Minneapolis Lawyers Rely on ‘Gold Standard’ Law to Keep Native American Families Together
https://bit.ly/2QwINme

Supreme Court Set to Consider Fate Of Indian Child Welfare Act in November
https://bit.ly/3BIVPlC