Protecting the sacred: Assessing Indigenous child welfare outcomes in Oklahoma using inclusive data practices.

BACKGROUND: Little empirical research exists on child welfare outcomes of Indigenous children in the US. OBJECTIVE: To determine if cases involving Indigenous children have higher odds of substantiation and child removal compared to cases involving non-Hispanic White children when controlling for public assistance, caregiver substance use, domestic violence, child demographics, and allegation types. PARTICIPANTS & SETTINGS: Child welfare cases from Oklahoma reported in the federal fiscal year 2019 National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System's child file. METHODS: Cases were classified as involving children who were either non-Hispanic White, Indigenous alone, or Indigenous along with other ethnoracial identities (i.e., Indigenous and White, Indigenous and Black, etc.). Descriptive statistics and logistic regression with clustering were conducted with a significance threshold of p < 0.05. RESULTS: Lower odds of substantiation were observed for cases involving Indigenous and White children (AOR: 0.91, 95%CI: 0.85, 0.97). Higher odds of removal were observed for cases involving Indigenous and White (AOR: 1.18, 95%CI: 1.07, 1.31), Hispanic, Indigenous, and White (AOR: 1.53, 95%CI: 1.25, 1.88), Indigenous, White, and Black (AOR: 1.64, 95%CI: 1.28, 2.10), Hispanic, Indigenous, White, and NHOPI (AOR: 5.15, 95%CI: 2.46, 10.77), Indigenous and Black (AOR: 1.41, CI: 1.03, 1.93), and Hispanic, Indigenous (AOR: 1.54, 95%CI: 1.13, 2.09) children. CONCLUSION: A better picture of Indigenous child welfare outcomes was obtained by disaggregating multiracial data including lower odds of substantiation and higher odds of removal for specific Indigenous subgroups.