The Family Healing Center
36% of children in foster care in Montana are Native American even though they make up only 9% of the state’s population. Native American children are 70% more likely to be placed in foster care than non-Native children even if they share the same family experiences. There is a direct link between a history of foster care and Native American girls and boys listed in the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons registry.
Why the disparities? What are we going to do about it?
The Family Healing Center, located in Lodge Grass, MT, draws on indigenous values and systems to bring justice, equality, and wellness to our communities. We meet our young families at the courts, help them engage in restorative/relational justice, heal from trauma, adopt a healthy Native parent identity, and recover from addiction. We also work tirelessly to bring every child from our community who is currently in foster care home and reunite them with their parents or relatives in a supported environment that offers emotional, social, educational, and economic support that leads to wellness for the whole family unit. We will support increased kinship care when parents cannot parent by providing in-home support resources and childcare for non-school-aged children. Our programs are designed to lift families out of poverty; protect them from abuse, neglect, and the risks associated with high ACE scores; and ensure their access to quality healthcare, sustainable indigenous education, and a spiritual foundation.
Our Family Healing Center is a community-based, relational program focused on repairing and restoring relationships between children and their parents, citizens and their community, families and their culture, individuals and their environment.