Supervision in Tribal and State Child Welfare Agencies: Professionalization, Responsibilities, Training Needs, and Satisfaction.

The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 sought "to protect the best interests of Indian children and to promote the stability and security of Indian tribes and families." The act defined tribal jurisdiction over Indian child custody decisions, limited state jurisdiction over the decisions, and provided the opportunity for tribes to establish or expand tribal child welfare and family service programs to serve tribal children and families in culturally sensitive ways [Barsh 1980; Blanchard and Barsh 1980; Davies 1982; Cross 1986; Trentadue and DeMontigny 1986; Blanchard 1987].In the 15 years, at this writing, since the passage of the act, some information is available about the organizational structure of tribal child welfare services [e.g., Davies 1982; Kelley et al. 1985; Cross 1986], tribal service policies [e.g., Wichlacz and Wechsler 1983], and their nationwide effectiveness [MacEachron 1992]. Little is known, however, about the ethnicity, professionalization, tasks, training needs, and job satisfaction of tribal child welfare personnel [e.g., Ware et al. 1992]. Using these dimensions, this study compares child welfare supervisors from majority-culture state agencies with those from tribal agencies. The information yielded may guide decisions about recruitment and training programs for child welfare personnel in relation to the Indian Child Welfare Act, as well as provide insight about the effect of cultural auspice on expectations for supervisory roles and job attitudes in child welfare organizations.ETHNICITY AND PROFESSIONALIZATIONPrior to passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act, advocates for tribal self-determination presented a number of reasons to Congress to explain the "alarmingly high" rate of removal of Native American children from their homes [Section 2, Indian Child Welfare Act 1978]. One crucial reason was that "many social workers, ignorant of Indian cultural values and social norms, make decisions that are wholly inappropriate in the context of Indian family life" [Byler 1977: 2-3], an issue that has since been raised for a number of different ethnic groups as well [e.g., Hogan and Siu 1988; Stevenson et al. 1992]. With the passage of the act, concern arose about the availability and competence of tribal child welfare personnel. Although using Native Americans as child welfare workers was presumed to enhance the cultural sensitivity of Indian child welfare practice, it was also presumed that overall tribal child welfare practice would suffer because there were relatively few Native American social work professionals. Miller et al. [1980: 471], for example, foresaw a "great need for the development of Indian social work manpower." Fischler [1980: 347] doubted the wisdom of developing tribal service systems in part because of the scarcity of "qualified American Indian professionals." Kessel and Robbins [1984: 229] noted that state child welfare workers resented "the lack of child welfare training among tribal personnel."Blanchard and Barsh [1980: 356] argued, however, that claims of manpower scarcity were "overstated." Moreover, in a small comparative study of leadership values among social work graduate students, Lewis and Ginerich [1980] found that Native American students valued the kind of person a leader was, whereas other students focused primarily on the skills and knowledge of a person. Cultural differences in value orientation, however, did not preclude the pursuit of majority-culture professional training [Dubray 1985]. As such, the present study's first hypothesis is as follows: While the ethnicity of tribal supervisors will be predominantly Native American and the ethnicity of state supervisors will be predominantly Caucasian, the professional education levels and child welfare background of tribal and state supervisors will be equivalent.SUPERVISORY TASKS AND TRAINING NEEDSAlthough the professional competency of tribal and state supervisors may be similar, their work responsibilities and roles could well differ. …