SD has highest rural poverty rate in Great Plains, By Marcus Traxler, May 23, 2012, Mitchell Daily Republic: “South Dakota has the highest rate of rural poverty in a 10-state region of the Great Plains, and more than one-fourth of the state’s rural children live in poverty, according to a report by the Center for Rural Affairs. According to 2010 census data used in the report, 20.6 percent of South Dakotans in rural counties live in poverty. That’s 44,973 of the state’s 218,821 rural residents. Montana was the next closest state with a rural poverty rate of 17.8 percent. A rural county is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as a county with a population center less than 10,000 residents in size and is not in a metropolitan or micropolitan area…”
Tag: Indian reservations
Native American Child Welfare – Washington
Tribe takes control of child welfare from state, By Jennifer Sullivan, March 28, 2012, Seattle Times: “Jessie Scheibner’s eyes cloud with tears and her voice trembles as she talks about the day, almost 70 years ago, when a stranger’s car pulled up to her parents’ home on the Port Gamble S’Klallam Reservation and took her and her two sisters away. The memories of that car ride when she was 3 and the years spent in one foster home after another are hazy. Foster care was difficult enough, but Scheibner, now 72, clearly recalls being ashamed of her dark hair, brown skin and Native American roots as she bounced from home to home off the reservation. She eventually was reunited with her mother and her sisters when she was 7, but the emotional scars remain. For decades, children who were removed from their homes in child-welfare cases among the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe and other tribes across the United States were taken off their reservations and placed in the homes of nontribal members. Because individual states handled child-welfare issues for Native-American tribes, including foster care, abused and neglected children were forced to leave their communities and, often, their cultures…”
Foster Care – Washington, South Dakota
- Overhaul to foster-care system wins approval, By Jennifer Sullivan, October 31, 2011, Seattle Times: “A years-long effort to overhaul the state’s foster-care system, making home placements more stable for children and keeping caseloads manageable for social workers, will be completed in just over two years. Under an agreement signed Monday, the state will have a far different child-welfare system in place by the end of 2013 than it did when a class-action lawsuit on behalf of foster children was filed in 1998. The case, known by state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) officials as Braam, is named after plaintiff Jessica Braam, who had been bounced through 34 foster-care placements by the time she was 12 years old. Her story became emblematic of problems that plagued the foster-care system overseen by the DSHS…”
- Governor’s office calls NPR foster care report flawed; congressmen seek review, By Kevin Woster, November 1, 2011, Rapid City Journal: “Staffers for Gov. Dennis Daugaard on Monday attacked a National Public Radio report critical of state child-protection programs that remove Native American children from their homes for foster-care placement, saying NPR was biased and inaccurate in its reporting. But two members of the U.S. House of Representatives thought the NPR report was valid enough to call for an investigation into whether those South Dakota child protection policies and practices with Native American families violate federal law. U. S. Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Dan Boren, D-Okla., sent a letter to Larry Echo Hawk, assistant secretary of the Interior Department for Indian Affairs, calling for the investigation. They allege, as the NPR report implies, that South Dakota violates the Indian Child Welfare Act, a law that directs officials to place Native American children removed from homes with their relatives or tribes, except in unusual situations…”