Rule changes for kinship care boost number of Native American foster homes, state says

The number of licensed Native American foster homes in South Dakota has grown by 44% since new rules took effect last summer for the licensing of foster homes run by family members or family friends.

The news came during a virtual meeting of the Indian Child Welfare Advisory Council on Wednesday. The council is designed to gather input from child protection representatives from each of the nine tribes in South Dakota for the state Department of Social Services.

The department oversees the state’s foster care system, where Native American children are overrepresented and non-Native American families head up the majority of licensed foster homes.

Lawmakers created the council in 2024, in part as a response to those disparities, which have persisted for generations in South Dakota.

As of Wednesday, 69% of the 1,719 kids in foster care in South Dakota were Native American, social services spokeswoman Emily Richardt told South Dakota Searchlight. 

About 13% of South Dakota’s child population is Native American.

Growth in Native American foster homes

During the Wednesday meeting, Sara Sheppick of the Department of Social Services said the number of licensed Native American foster homes grew from 93 in July 2025 to 134 in late February.

That’s about 15% of total foster homes. The total number of licensed homes grew from 793 to 908 in that same time period.

The growth is “largely due” to new kinship licensing standards, Sheppick said. 

Legislators plan to learn about Native American health care, emergency services, disability care

To be licensed, foster parents must be 21 years old, pass a health screening and complete 30 hours of training. 

“Kinship care” is a form of foster care that places children removed from their homes under suspicion of abuse or neglect with extended family members or people who have a close relationship with the child’s family. 

Before the rule changes, kinship foster parents needed to meet those same standards to be eligible for licensing. The rule changes opened up kinship licensing to those 19 and older, removed the training and health screening requirements and offered child protective services workers the ability to evaluate placements on a case-by-case basis.

The total number of kids placed in kinship care has grown by 6% since last July, Sheppick said.

A license is not required for kinship care, but only caregivers with a license are eligible for reimbursement for their expenses. The number of kids placed in licensed kinship care, Sheppick noted, has increased by 80% since last July, from 143 to 258.

As of Wednesday, 33% of Native American foster kids were in kinship care, Richardt told Searchlight after the meeting. The kinship care figure for non-Native foster kids is 38%.

Next steps

In a letter supporting the kinship licensure changes that was submitted to the Legislature’s Rules Review Committee in 2025, the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s Child Protection Services Director Susan Schrader wrote that temporary care from extended family members is a longstanding part of Lakota culture.

Long term, she wrote, it’s healthier and less traumatic for a kid to stay with family than with strangers, but many families on reservations avoid the licensing process because they find the process “too difficult and cumbersome.”

At the time, she wrote, there were 400 families caring for relatives without receiving the financial assistance from the state that would be available through licensing. Those children and families “are not receiving the benefits and assistance that being in a licensed kinship home would provide.”

Schrader is also a member of the advisory committee. 

She hopes to see the state to work more closely with tribes on kinship placements in the future, she said Wednesday. Until a recent retirement, Schrader’s tribe had a staff member who specialized in connecting children who need temporary care with extended family and family friends. That sort of work on the local level could benefit the state and children on tribal lands, she said.

“I’m requesting that the state look at supporting the tribes to have our own kinship locators,” Schrader said, because “we know our families, and we’re from here.” 

Tiffany Wolfgang, the head of state Child Protection Services, told Schrader the department is looking for “win-win” situations on kinship placement and encouraged Schrader to keep the lines of communication open. 

“We do have some good data to show that this has been impactful, but we always want to be striving to take a look at how we continue to grow, mature, and respond to what worked and what didn’t work,” Wolfgang said.