IT TAKES A VILLAGE
Foster program is a new model of care for Indigenous children in this small town on a reservation
Past a gravel road lined with old white wooden buildings is a new eight-acre village dotted with colorful houses, tepees and a sweat lodge.
The Simply Smiles Children’s Village, in this small town on the Cheyenne River Reservation, is home to a program aimed at improving outcomes and reducing trauma for Indigenous foster children. All foster programs seek to safely reunite children with their families. The Children’s Village goes further.
“We want to make
Lakota citizens of the world,” said Colt Combellick, who oversees mental health programs at the village. “If we can help them relearn their culture and their heritage and connect them to the resources that they need to thrive moving forward, we’re going to try to make that happen.”
The program is an example of the growing nationwide effort to improve services for Indigenous children, after generations were routinely traumatized by being separated from their families and cultures. While the Indian boarding school era is over, and improvements have been made to child welfare systems, Indigenous families remain overrepresented in the foster care system.
Simply Smiles, a nonprofit organization, aims to improve Indigenous foster care by keeping children in their tribal community instead of placing them in foster families away from the reservation. It has hired trained professionals whose full-time job is to care for children in a village setting that provides cultural programming and mental health services.
“We actually have research that shows that kids who have stronger cultural identity have better child well-being outcomes,” said Angelique Day, an associate professor at the University of Washington and an expert on Indigenous child welfare.
Day, who is not affiliated with Simply Smiles, said she’s excited by any innovative program aimed at improving child welfare in tribal communities if it provides adequate training so foster parents can support the children and avoid turnover. She said it’s also important for organizations to arrange for independent evaluation of kids’ progress after leaving foster programs.
It’s too early to say whether Simply Smiles will succeed in its goals, but the Children’s Village has the support of the leaders of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe and has attracted interest and visits from officials representing Indigenous nations across the country.
It was a Cheyenne River Sioux tribal member who suggested the nonprofit set up a foster village on the reservation after learning about a similar program in Mexico. The tribal council voted to support the idea, and Simply Smiles has advisers including child welfare experts, elders and other leaders of the Cheyenne River Sioux and other tribes.
Simply Smiles’ model combines living in a house in a family setting with the resources of more institutional settings, said Bryan Nurnberger, president and founder of the Connecticut-based nonprofit.
The Children’s Village in La Plant, South Dakota, has one foster parent caring for three teenagers. It’s hiring other parents to fill its three homes, which, together, can house up to six parents and 18 children.
The family has access to a counseling and family visiting center, as well as a large blue barn that stores a bus, maintenance equipment and new clothing for the children to “shop” through.
MarShondria Adams, 39, grew up with stepsiblings who were placed in multiple foster homes. Last year, she moved 300 miles from Sioux Falls, South
Dakota’s largest city, to La Plant, population 167, to become a foster parent at the Children’s Village.
On a recent cold and foggy morning, Adams’ three foster teens made smoothies for breakfast inside their navy-blue house with a bubble-gumpink front door. Adams drove them to school and then returned home, where she did laundry and filled out paperwork for the state’s child welfare department. Her after-school plan was to cook dinner as the kids tackled a YouTube exercise class.
Being a traditional foster parent in Sioux
Falls would “be a day-andnight difference,” Adams said. She wouldn’t have on-site resources and staff members to assist her and the children with tasks ranging from repairing flat tires to finding a specialist who conducts learning disability assessments.
“I have all these people that are around me to support me and help me,”
Adams said. Traditional foster parents probably spend more time than she does playing phone tag with case managers and searching for other resources, she added.
The program’s foster parents receive 70 more hours of training than required by the state, including education about Lakota culture. It also offers telehealth therapy, evaluations and medication management to the foster parents, children and birth parents. Combellick said the mental health services use trauma-informed and culturally relevant evidence-based methods.
The nonprofit funds these services through donations, grants and the state, which also refers potential foster children to Simply Smiles.
Combellick, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, is another Simply Smiles staffer with a personal story about family separations.
His father was 6 years old when his mother went missing and was found dead on the reservation. Combellick’s dad and his siblings were sent 80 miles away to an Indian boarding school, where they stayed about a year before being reunited with their family.
Combellick said his father developed post-traumatic stress disorder from boarding school, where he faced corporal punishment and was not allowed to speak the Lakota language.
“That’s what spurred my passion. I just wanted to learn about my family history and how to break those cycles of oppression,” he said.
Combellick became a social worker and hoped someday to find a way to directly support his tribe.
“I came by Simply Smiles, and — boom! — it’s like 300 yards from where my ancestors grew up,” he said.
South Dakota, which has a foster care rate 60% higher than the national average, has a shortage of licensed foster parents from all backgrounds. This rate and shortage are highest for Indigenous South Dakotans. More than half the state’s foster children are Native American, even though Native children make up only 12% of the population.
Even with the pay and on-site support, Simply Smiles has found it challenging to recruit and retain caregivers. The first foster family arrived in fall 2020, but the parent burned out amid COVID19 pandemic closures on the reservation. Another parent, from a large city outside of South Dakota, left after finding life in such a remote area too difficult.
Marcella Gilbert, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, coordinates cultural programming such as trips to powwows and outings to hunt elk and bison. She also cares for the children when their foster parent needs a break.
“We’re asking people to do the hardest job in the world, which is being a parent to children coming into our homes with loss and trauma,” Gilbert said.