WRCAC Interview with Jennifer Calder of the Native Child Advocacy Resource Center

What advice would you offer non-Native service providers working with MDTs or CACs to serve Indigenous children and families?

This is a great question. I think a respectful, authentic curiosity is essential, along with a commitment to partnership. When we think of partnering with Tribes, or Native Nations, you really want to be thinking about your planning for services in terms of three areas. 

First, what are the sovereignty considerations that need to be considered? When we think of sovereignty, it’s about authority and rights. Does your CAC partner with Native Nations? If so, what does this partnership look like? Do you work with Tribal council, or the appropriate leadership to get appropriate signatories on your MOU (memoranda of understanding) and your interagency agreements? Is there a Tribal code that addresses child victims? (For more information about the importance of Tribal sovereignty, check out NCARC Practice Brief 4: Tribal Sovereignty and the CAC Model and WRCAC Roundup Issue 19.)

The second area of consideration is looking at the Tribe or nation’s systems, structures, programs and offices. Do they have a Tribal Child welfare program that you should be partnering with? Do they have a Tribal Court in place that would be appropriate for prosecution? What will the partnership look like with Tribal law enforcement and local/county/state law enforcement look like? And so on.

The third area of consideration is about ensuring services for Native American and Alaska Native children and families are culturally grounded and appropriate. Culture has many layers and is very specific to each Native Nation and the Tribal community you are partnering with. You’ll want to ask how you can better integrate culture into your program, and if there are cultural knowledge holders or Elders (Tribes may call this different things), that you can bring on your MDT as a true and equal partner. They will be the experts you turn to for guidance. Follow their lead and be intentional. How will you engage them in service planning and provision in a meaningful, integrated way? How will you put resources towards cultural healing practices? And, importantly, how will you learn about a families’ cultural interests and needs from the very beginning?

One of the first things your program should get clarity about is whether or not you are identifying Native children and families. It is essential to know if a child is enrolled in a Tribe, is a citizen of a Native nation, or identifies as American Indian/Alaska Native. Often, this information is not asked for, and even if it is, there is no follow-up to connect children and families with appropriate services. Each Tribe may have specific rights and protocols that should be followed. If you determine a child and family are citizens of a Tribe, ask them if they would like to connect with Tribal services. This could be their nation’s child welfare, family support, victim advocacy, cultural healers, and so on. Whether they are enrolled in a federally recognized Tribe or not, they may still be interested in culturally specific healing modalities, so it is always good to ask.

In general, Native people’s ways of knowing and doing is deeply relational and holistic. So, know that it may take time to develop trust and a true partnership. The more you show up in a way that is both authentically curious about what the Tribe wants in terms of partnership, and respectful of their sovereignty, the stronger the partnership will be which ultimately leads to better care for child victims, their families, and the community.

What is your view of the current state of the CAC movement in Indian Country?

The CAC movement in Indian Country is one that is finding a good deal of momentum. There are really two avenues for CAC services in Indian Country. The first is for Native Nations and Tribal communities to develop their own accredited CACs. Currently, we know of eight Tribal CACs that are in various stages of accreditation with the National Children’s Alliance (NCA), which is great. One of the goals of our program, is to take lessons learned from existing CACs, and share this more broadly across Indian Country. We recently published a Practice Brief which distills some of the wisdom from Directors of these CACs led by Native Nations. We also want to recognize that there are many Tribal CACs that, while not accredited, are doing a good job of providing services to children and families in their community. We are trying to connect with them, learn from them, and if there is interest, support them in the pursuit of accreditation. (You can learn more about one such program in this Practice Brief.)

The second means by which Indian Country is served by CACs is through non-Tribal CAC programs, either “urban” or those near reservations, pueblos, villages or rancherias. Part of our work is in supporting them to find ways to better serve Native children and families. We offer many resources for this purpose. We invite anyone interested to check out our Native Child Advocacy Resource Center website. In general, we are finding increased interest from non-Tribal services in these topics, which we think is great.

From your experience, what has been the impact of the CACs that have been developing in Indian Country?

It has been huge for Native Nations and Tribal communities to have their own MDTs and CACs. If we look through the lens of those three areas of consideration- sovereignty, systems/offices and culture- it is tremendously empowering and appropriate that our nations pick up this work as they are able. As one director of a Tribal CAC put it, “Tribal MDTs create a space where the Tribal worldview, spirituality, values, and ways of relating can get enacted. It creates a safe space to be able to create what is necessary for that child to be put on a path to healing.”

One of the things we wanted to better understand more broadly, is the overall state of Tribal MDTs and CACs in Indian Country. Where are they? What do they provide? What are their needs? What are their strengths? We've had the good fortune to work with a wonderful evaluator, Nancy Lucero, who is helping us understand this through a multi-year needs assessment. A few months back we published a summary In year two, we will dig deeper into this, and hope to have more to share.

Since the development of NCARC, what has been the impact you have seen or experienced in terms of the capacity of both tribal and non-tribal CACs that serve AI/AN youth?

It has been a little over a year since we’ve gotten the NCARC up and running. While we are fairly new, we have seen amazing advancements already. New CACs have opened, there are CACs in development, and we have discovered CACs that have been operating in the field for many years that were not connected to the CAC network. One of the barriers we’ve found is that there isn’t a “map” of existing Tribal MDTs and CACs, both accredited and non-accredited. We want to continue identifying existing Tribal CACs and interested nations, connect them to each other, and develop a sense of community. We have brought together our Tribal CACs and given them a forum to meet and support each other and to share their wisdom and learn together.

Another of our goals is to improve non-Tribal organization's ability to serve Native children and families. We have seen so many of our non-Tribal partners seeking to have more meaningful relationships with Native Nations and wanting to understand why there could be trust issues when working with non-Tribal partners. The responses to some of our conversations, training and resources have been encouraging. I think one of the areas that have the biggest “aha” moments are when we present on historical trauma. This helps people connect the dots to understand why there are so many disparities, as well as why Native peoples may not trust service providers. We also find our resources help non-Tribal organizations to really understand that Tribes are sovereign nations with their own governance structures. Partnerships require approaching them, not just as another organization, but as political entities with rights, processes and systems that need to be honored. We are optimistic and excited to see where the field is going to be in five years.

If you were making the case to a Native Nation that they should consider developing their own CAC, what would you say?



One of the unfortunate things in Indian Country, is often, the jurisdictional complexities and the lack of partnerships- in both the investigation and prosecution of child abuse and neglect cases- means that sometimes our children and family victims “fall through the cracks.” I think pretty much every Tribal community has had these experiences, and it is painful and deeply frustrating. Having a Tribally led MDT or a CAC will help ensure that our children and families will get the justice and healing they deserve in a culturally responsive way.

Can you give us an overview of some of the training and resources NCARC offers?

We offer webinars, in-person and online trainings, coaching, Practice Briefs, forthcoming guides, just to name a few examples. We do our best to ground these resources in Indigenous ways of knowing and doing, while aligning them with the NCA Accreditation Standards. We are eager to launch our online learning modules on our website. They will have content specific to working in Indian Country on topics like secondary traumatic stress, mandatory reporting, the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and cultural humility.

One of the things we realized early on is that there aren’t many MDT and CAC resources available out there which specifically address the needs in Indian Country. Which is not to say there aren’t a lot of amazing MDT/CAC resources already in existence. We draw on and refer many people we work with to resources like the Regional CACs, which are incredibly rich and thoughtful in what they do. WRCAC in particular has a strength in their work and partnerships in Indian Country.

What we find is missing are robust resources that address those three consideration areas specifically. We’ve approached the development of our resources in a couple of different ways. The first is gathering Native knowledge. This aligns well with Indigenous ways of knowing and doing. It entails listening and learning from the wisdom of those with the experience. We’ve found interviewing people and publishing the conversations in our Practice Briefs to be a good way to gather and share, as well as providing presentations and webinars with those who are doing the work in Indian country. Another way we are approaching our product development is by building out or building on. We will utilize an existing resource as an inspiration, then create something new that addresses those three areas of consideration.

For example, one of the things we are most excited about is our MDT Development Guide which we hope to have published early this summer. This guide outlines three phases of MDT development and provides clear steps along the way that take into account the considerations that are essential for working in Indian Country. For example, one early step in Phase One of our MDT Guide is to invite readers to look into their Tribal Code for language that would support an MDT. We offer guiding questions, links to online resources that can help with this, and examples of Tribal Code from other Native Nations that helped them establish their MDT.



Another resource that will help support this is in development in partnership with the Tribal Law and Policy Institute. This resource will offer guidance on creating Tribal Code that addresses sovereignty, MDT, and CAC development. We really believe this resource will be a powerful tool to affirm sovereignty and establish clear roles and responsibilities which will support strong partnerships.