- Always continually do we get asked and do we get phone calls and do we get emails saying, "This is dire need, we need more foster homes.

"We need more places that can take in these kids."

- We have great resources for clothes, diapers, toys.

We have great resources for things, we don't have great resources for people.

- Just try and build those connections that you can, but don't hold on too tight.

Nothing ever lasts in the system.

- [Narrator] Those everyday conversations aren't bringing change.

They're not impacting the numbers.

- If I can take the hurt of a child away, that's what we'll do.

- [Narrator] There aren't enough families licensed to care for the state's foster children and current foster parents need community-wide support.

That's tonight's "South Dakota Focus."

- [Announcer] This is a production of SDPD.

(drum music) (upbeat music) - I've said it before this season, but I'll say it again.

Our childhood experiences help shape the adults we become and adults shape the world for children, but the families we're born to, don't always create the safest world.

Last month we met the Chase family of Huron.

They adopted their four children from foster care and their son's memories of his birth home, contributed to severe mental health and behavioral issues, he continues to work through as a 12-year-old in residential treatment.

- The kid has got PTSD, 'cause of what he witnessed when he was two and three years old.

And that's what led us down this road.

We knew that there was going to be a different path for him compared to the girls.

- On average, there were more than a thousand children in foster care in South Dakota in any given month last year.

Children enter foster care for a number of different reasons and every child's journey looks a little bit different.

Tonight we're gonna hear from two young women who spent time in the foster system and we're gonna start with Keeley Bad Warrior.

She lives in Rapid City and grew up on the Cheyenne River Reservation.

- I'm 25 years old.

I aged out of the foster care system.

I was in there for two years and I was in treatment facilities and group homes as well.

It was only one group home and one treatment facility.

And I was in DSS care when I turned 13.

Before that I was with my grandmother, but she was sick and had a stroke and she could no longer take care of herself and she lost her whole left side.

And I was pretty much taking care of her, more than she was taking care of me.

And then the DSS showed up at my school, at my principal's office and they pulled me outta math class and I missed the showing of a black hawk helicopter that day.

I know just to go home and pick up a week's worth of clothes which didn't, it was like longer than a week.

It was like years.

But that day it was like the hardest day for me, because they literally ripped me out my grandmother's arms and she was laying on the couch and my cousin was so worried like she didn't know what was happening.

Or she's like, where are you going?

Why are you leaving?

It was just a awful dreadful day that I like hate annually.

I have to relive that, and yeah.

- [Narrator] When a child enters state custody, where they go next depends on their individual needs.

Tifanie Petro is the director of Child and Family Services for Children's Home Society.

She explains the different levels of care, within the child welfare system.

- In the state of South Dakota, you have your basic foster care.

Those are families that are licensed by the Department of Social Services and Child Protection Services.

They actually partner with Lutheran Social Services to actually do those home studies.

But those are gonna be your families that, or with children that don't have a lot of needs or that are more manageable in a typical home setting, whatever typical means.

Therapeutic foster level care is, there's different agencies across the state that provide the service, Children's Home Society being one of them.

And they're higher skilled home.

So, children that are maybe demonstrating more behaviors or have more say medical needs, mental health needs, they could be placed with a family that has received higher levels of training and they also have therapeutic level support.

So, for our families at Children's Home, we have a licensed counselor, we have a case manager that can help get kids to their appointments.

There's extra services in place for those children to help mitigate the impact of their needs on that family.

- [Narrator] If a child's needs surpass a therapeutic foster home, they might move to a group home setting or a facility with more specialized mental health or substance care.

- And if those types of facilities are not sufficient, then they'll look at residential care and that being the highest care.

It's always important to remember that when the system partners are examining placement needs, that the goal is always the least restrictive option.

Whatever we can do to maintain as little disruption to that child's environment, to their connection to their community.

That's the threshold that gets set for say, child welfare workers.

- [Narrator] Another option is kinship care.

Placing a child with a relative or another adult they already know.

But limited state reimbursement for kinship care, compared to licensed foster care can make a difference in a relative's ability to provide for a new child in the home.

In most cases, the end goal of foster care is to reunify children with their families.

That can take months or sometimes years at a time, depending on the reasons for a child's removal.

And sometimes it doesn't happen at all.

This is Hannah Brink's story.

- I was 12 and I was in the women in children's shelter in Custer, South Dakota.

My mom had been struggling with drug addiction and mental health issues for many, many years and eventually after years of dodging DSS, she eventually called herself in when she attempted suicide for the first time and she overdosed.

And then we were sitting in the police station for probably about six hours until they found a placement.

There are no DSS offices in Custer, so they took us to Hot Springs.

And so I was first placed when I was 12 and then I was in foster care for about six years, until I aged out in 2021.

I want people to know that, just because a youth and young adult has been in foster care or is in foster care, doesn't make them a bad kid.

There's a big stigma and stereotype around foster youth.

Most times, well all times it was not their fault getting placed in foster care and it is not their fault they can't get adopted or that they're not adopted or that they aged out.

It is the fault of the circumstances they've been put in and how few adoptive homes are willing to take in older teenagers and older kids in general.

I lost my hope of adoption when I was 14.

My foster home kicked me outta that home.

And then I was like, "Okay," they adopted my sister, they tried to adopt my little brother.

Once they removed me, I'm like, "There's no other really outlook."

And when I was 16, it got officially declared as, no, no hope of adoption or anything.

That wasn't the plan for the future.

The plan for the future was possible emancipation.

I didn't really want that, 'cause I wanted to keep my benefits from aging out.

And so I just looked things from the positive side that I was gonna have Medicaid till I was 26.

Education helped till I was 25 and that I got had to make the best of the situation I was in and better myself to prove that, that even though there's a statistic that within the first two years of aging out, over 80% of the youth and young adults, fall to incarceration, death or addiction and never get past that.

I wanted to change that.

I wanted to become one of the 20% and show people that there are those that do make it past that statistic.

- [Narrator] Children enter foster care for a number of reasons.

In South Dakota, the leading causes are neglect, parental substance abuse and parental incarceration.

But no matter the reason, foster care is a traumatic experience.

And as we know from earlier episodes of this season, childhood trauma impacts brain development and emotional health.

Understanding the impact of the foster care system on children is critical for providing kids the resources they need.

Think back to the Chase family who knew from the start their son, would need additional mental health support for what he experienced in his birth home.

But that can also make the process of becoming a foster parent all the more intimidating.

- South Dakota has a shortage of foster families.

According to the State Department of Social Services, an average of 1500 children a month were in foster care last year, but the department only had, about 800 licensed foster families.

And that's with the hundreds of families who have gone through the licensing training as a result of Governor Kristi Noem's, Stronger Families Together Initiative that's to recruit foster families.

In an email statement earlier this month, a DSS spokesperson wrote, "Foster families are needed "in all communities across South Dakota, "most critically in the western "and central parts of the state.

"Foster families are needed for all ages and genders.

"However, there is a significant need "for more Native American foster families.

"The department also holds a need for foster families "who can be available to care for sibling groups, "older children and children, "whose special needs require ongoing medical, "mental health and or behavioral healthcare.

"Foster families capable of supporting services "to address the developmental needs of children "are also needed."

There are a lot of reasons for the shortage of foster families, but a leading cause could be the stories we tell about the system in the first place.

- So, I think what we see in the news and then in the media in general are the horror stories of foster care.

- [Narrator] Tammy Vande Kamp is a mental health nurse practitioner in Hartford.

She's a mom, grandma and foster mom of four young girls.

- We hear about the foster children that may run away or we hear about the foster parents that abuse the foster children or the kiddos that end up going home and they end up abused.

Or unfortunately maybe even they're killed.

It's a very, very small part of foster care.

- [Narrator] The Vandy Kamp started fostering two years ago.

- And our first placement was actually through 10 day old newborn.

We took home from the hospital, from the NICU and he stayed with us for eight months and then we were able to reunify him with his mom.

- [Narrator] Like other foster families, she gets frequent emails from the Department of Social Services, looking for placement options for kids in the system.

There just aren't enough foster parents to meet the need.

- Last week there were several children that needed homes.

I'm not gonna give you an exact number, but there were several in the Sioux Falls area alone that needed homes that, I mean, we're full.

Right now we have four foster children and two biological children living in our home.

So, we're at capacity.

And it's sad and I don't, if anybody wants to reach out to me, I will give you my number and you can call me and ask me any questions about foster care you want.

If you're scared to become a foster parent.

And I will tell you the truth, what's hard and what's not hard.

- [Narrator] What Tammy hears most from potential foster parents is a fear of getting too attached to the children they care for.

She gets it.

She used to feel the same way.

- And I learned through classes and through the program that we're teaching them how to be attached.

We're trying to teach these children to attach so that when they're older, when they're adults, they can attach to other people, they can trust people, they can trust other grownups and they can maybe attach to their future children.

When we did have to return our first foster child back to his mom, I had a peace knowing that we gave him what he needed for the time he was with us.

I was sad, but I also knew that we gave him the best of us that we could give him and we gave him a good start for her to then continue on.

We have been fortunate to have some beautiful children in our home.

Yes, there are challenging times.

Yes, we have hard times.

They have hard times, but there is so much good that comes out of them and us.

And so I think people get scared when the media, we do stories on things that are negative, but we don't do enough stories on the things that are positive.

Like the child went through foster care and they graduated high school, they graduated college or things of, or they ended up with a forever home, even though maybe they were never adopted.

We need more focus on that.

- On the reservation I went to a group home, I went there and stayed there for a couple years and then I had a kinship with my auntie.

She's no longer with us no more.

Neither is my grandmother.

That's one thing that I had to deal with.

Still trying to deal with that.

But I went with her for six months.

But that really didn't work out, because some information had came out and they put me in emergency placing and I was back in that group home facility for another, I don't know, however long.

And then I came out here to Rapid City and went to WellFully.

That's 'cause I ran away.

I ran away from that group home.

I wasn't going anywhere if I stayed there and knew nothing was gonna happen.

But I had no idea that I was gonna reconnect with my siblings.

They have been adopted out.

I have four of them younger than me and I kinda lost that.

Never really had that relationship with them.

So, to build and get to know them, we were on a bowling league together.

It was great, yeah.

Their adoptive parents were had like bowling leagues and stuff.

Every Saturday and my, that's whenever I was in treatment.

But they found these foster parents for me.

I've only been in one foster home and it stuck and it was great.

And I was lucky, like my siblings, they weren't so lucky.

They like had several different foster homes and they didn't work out so well.

And then eventually I'm sure they found their place.

But for me it was one shot and then I was able to get in there and it worked out pretty well.

Well, I actually allowed it to work out, allowed them to get close to me, allowed myself to be vulnerable and open up and have that connection and a relationship and let them take care of me and show me some type of love, 'cause well I've had that for my grandmother, but not really anybody else.

My auntie, that's all I knew.

I wanted to know something else.

- [Narrator] Some news stories might discourage people from looking into foster care, but a local news story is exactly what inspired Brandy and Scott Louwagie of Sioux Falls.

- There had been a murder in front of kids and that these kids did not speak English.

And of course they had to go to a foster home.

And I thought, "That is so horrible.

"They saw their mother get killed "and now they have to go to a foster home."

And so we kind of talked about, starting our family at that point and we had just said, let's look at foster care.

So, we said, let's give it one year and 10 years later we're still doing it.

- The Louwagies adopted three children from foster care.

When we interviewed them earlier this month, they were also fostering infant girl.

Brandy is a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act or ICWA that means the Louwagies and other Native foster families are preferred when a native child needs a placement.

Their children today are from the Oglala Sioux and Ponca tribes.

- And the responsibility that comes with being an ICWA home is just making sure they're those children.

If they're connected with their culture to continue that connection.

And if they're not, introduce them to that side of their culture, so that if they are seeking that when they're older or something, it's not something brand new to them when they're trying to seek that heritage from, maybe they grow up in the system and they aren't with us forever.

- [Narrator] The Louwagies are one of very few, ICWA-designated families in Minnehaha County, and that shortage persists around the state.

DSS reported 74% of children in state custody were Native American as of last May.

And of the state's 808 foster families, just 89 of those were Native American.

Four of the nine tribes in South Dakota license their own foster families.

But there are still more children in need of placements than there are licensed spots available.

It's a complicated problem with a long history.

For decades, state social workers removed Native children from their families in favor of placement with white foster families, often for unfounded reasons.

This disrupted family and cultural connections in traumatic ways.

South Dakota Senator Jim Abourezk wrote the Indian Child Welfare Act based on the prevalence of the issue here at home.

ICWA passed Congress in 1978.

The federal policy prioritizes placing Native children in foster or adoptive homes which will reflect the unique values of Indian culture.

The policy has withstood multiple challenges in the court system since.

Even with this federal policy in place, South Dakota continues to lead the nation in the number of Native children placed in foster care.

It's been more than 20 years, since a significant state study on the issue.

Last year, lawmakers considered creating a task force to examine the over-representation of Native children in the foster system.

Representative Peri Pourier, a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, was the prime sponsor.

- And the highest form of maltreatment, affecting Native children in the state system is neglect.

Now, being born and raised in one of the most poorest counties in the United States, I can tell you, neglect looks a lot like poverty.

- [Narrator] Opponents argued the bill wasn't the best way to address the issue and noted the upcoming Supreme Court Ruling on the constitutionality of prioritizing, placing Native children with Native families.

Representative Pourier emphasized the state has a role to play, regardless of the Supreme Court's decision.

- This is a problem that the tribes cannot solve on their own.

They still need the state of South Dakota.

And this is not a problem the state of South Dakota can solve on its own.

You need the tribes.

We need each other.

Why?

Because these are our children.

Because this is the future of this state.

Native Americans make up less than ten percent of the population this state, but where do you see them the most?

- [Narrator] Lawmakers ultimately defeated the bill and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld ICWA months later.

This year, a different bill to create an Indian Child Welfare Advisory Council, within the Department of Social Services fared better.

Its primary opponent, Department of Social Services Secretary, Matt Althoff.

He told lawmakers in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee that the everyday work of the department, will prove more effective in the long-run than any part-time advisory council.

- [Matt] If we continue to work with the individual tribes as we have been doing, we feel we've been doing, we can always do better, but as we continue to work with their particular needs and their particular circumstances, which largely hinge around staffing at the moment, who they have of able-bodied and capable bodies to sort of staff the needs that they have at that time and that particular tribal land, might be a more effective way to achieve increasingly better outcomes.

And for that reason I just would respectfully ask this committee to resist the bill, despite its profoundly good intentions, despite the good effort that's been forth to sort of demonstrate we can do better.

I stand in unison with the representative about that reality.

I resist any notion to say that we've arrived.

We can always do better.

But I think the committee might not be the best way.

It might give us a false sense of expectation that we will achieve that.

- [Narrator] The bill's prime sponsor was Representative Tamara St. John, a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate.

In her rebuttal, she noted the secretary's ongoing efforts.

- [Tamara] It's a hard job to reach the tribes.

He's made that effort with tribes.

I hear it on both sides of that.

But those every day conversations aren't bringing change.

They aren't impacting the numbers.

So, we have to do something different.

- [Narrator] The bill passed, and the governor signed it into law.

The advisory council is mandated to meet at least once a year.

In an email earlier this month, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Services wrote, "DSS is preparing for the new law to take effect.

"Since the commission is erected through the appointment "of representatives from each "of South Dakota's nine recognized tribes, "details for the commission will not be finalized, "until the appointments have been formally invited "by DSS and made by the respective tribal councils.

"Children are received into the child welfare system "at the determination of law enforcement "with oversight from courts.

"Courts determine whether a child have suffered abuse "and or neglect at the hands of their caregivers.

"DSS's role is to provide care to children received "into its custody, "ensure the care they receive is appropriate and safe "and to provide assistance to parents facing barriers "to their ability to provide safe care "to their own children.

"Stronger families and stronger communities, alone, "can stop the abuse and neglect "that children in South Dakota suffer."

In an interview for the Argus Leader and South Dakota Searchlight series on the state's compliance with ICWA released this fall, Governor Kristi Noem said the problem, will take more than a single program or investment to solve.

"You've got to have prevention and intervention "and training and services "for when these families have a crisis," she said.

"By only talking about these kids "when they're already in the foster care system, "that will do nothing to guarantee "that we're not sitting here in 10 years again."

The governor's office did not respond to an invitation to participate in this program.

- [Jackie] Then I'm thinking of, maybe, advice or words that you would have for, like, 12 year olds that are entering the system.

- Absolutely.

It's not gonna be easy.

Just try and build those connections that you can, but don't hold on too tight.

Nothing ever lasts in the system.

Well, sometimes it does, but there's a lot of false hope.

Always have that inner hope in yourself that you're going to get through it, because there is another side to it, whether you get adopted, kinship, guardianship or aged out or reunification.

Whatever it is, it's not gonna last forever.

And you just gotta have that hope in yourself and that you're going to make it through and the best person in your life forever is going to be yourself.

- [Jackie] What would you share with those families who are maybe they hear all these things about how we need foster families, but don't really know what it means.

- Yeah, it means just being that support person for them.

Whether it's listening to them, being that person they can come to, because they're not going to come to you immediately and you don't want to get discouraged by that.

There's always the honeymoon phase, but then after that turns into complete chaos and then at that chaos, you need to take a step back and be like, "Hold up, this isn't gonna last forever.

"I gotta build that connection.

"I gotta become that person they're going to trust."

They're not gonna automatically trust you, because they've had so many people let them down in life or be moved immediately from one place to another.

They don't know how long they're going to be with you and they don't want to build up another connection that's just going to be torn down or could possibly be easily torn down in a matter of days.

So, just give it time.

They're going to be cautious at first.

They're not gonna want to open up or anything.

But once they do, take that and run.

- [Narrator] The foster system is far from perfect.

But the families we met for this episode are doing the best they can.

And they need all the help they can get.

- Always continually do we get asked and do we get phone calls and do we get emails saying, "This is dire need, we need more foster homes.

"We need more places that can take in these kids."

And we do as much as we can.

I know it's not enough, but, we can only do as much as we can.

- I think we have great resources for things.

We have great resources for clothes, diapers, toys.

They've got great resources for things.

We don't have great resources for people.

One thing my children don't need is more toys.

They don't need more toys, they don't need another blanket and they don't need another stuffed animal.

They need people.

They need community.

They need other adults in their lives who can be positive role models and certainly the Native American population of children, need positive Native American role models.

That's what we need.

- You can do a lot of support for foster care and never have to have accepted a child into your home.

You can buy them a gift card.

You can watch the kids and let them go out for a date night.

You can maybe get them a little extra gift at Christmas to help offset the cost of having other additional children in their home.

There's a lot of things that community members can do, without ever having to sign up for a foster parent class.

And if nothing else, just maybe understanding the dynamics of what those children are facing, so that the next time you're in your favorite restaurant and you're having a meal and you hear a kiddo screaming and crying, maybe we respond with empathy versus judgment.

- A lot of people say, "I just don't have the time to foster."

Or, "I would just fall in love with them so much," and I'm like, that's exactly what foster care is.

We are so busy all the time.

I mean we have sports, doctors visits, both of us travel, so pretty much one of us is always doing almost everything, and the thing is, yeah, the kids are what you love.

- [Jackie] Anything you want to add?

- No, just, for me, it's just giving them the opportunity to have some sense of security or stability and having them feel safe, basically.

Not have to worry about whatever their situation is at home and if we can make that happen for a short term or long term or whatever it may be, then that's what we want to do.

- I mean, you just have to understand, like, if I can take the hurt of a child away, that's what we'll do.

(bright music)