The Tribal Court Improvement Program strives to improve child welfare practices within the Tribal court and foster stronger collaboration among DHRD’s child welfare program, the Tribal Court system, and other key stakeholders. The objective is to collectively enhance the safety permanency, and overall well-being of children in the child welfare system.
Tribal Court Improvement Project Director: Carla Toroslan, MLS
Email: Carla.Torosian@cskt.org
Phone: (406) 675-2700 ext 1369
Hours: Mon-Thu 7:00am – 5:30pm
Program Objectives
Conduct a comprehensive assessment of how tribal courts (including other courts for tribal consortia) handle child welfare proceedings.
- Make improvements to court processes to provide for the safety, permanency, and well-being of children and increase and improve engagement of the entire family in court processes relating to child welfare, family preservation, family reunification, and adoption.
- Ensure children’s safety, permanency, and well-being needs are met in a timely and complete manner through better collection and analysis of data.
- Provide training for judges, attorneys and legal personnel in child welfare cases.
- Continuously improve the quality of court hearings and legal representation, including the engagement of parties through training and efforts to increase substantive and procedural justice.
Target Population
The programs services will impact the target population, which includes CSKT members, descendants, and individuals from other federally recognized Indian tribes receiving services from DHRD or involved in child welfare cases before the Tribal Court. The programs activities will target DHRD’s child welfare staff, as well as the staff of various components of CSKT‘s legal system, and members of the reservation community and other Tribes who will benefit from the project’s outreach and training activities.
Program Stakeholders
- Tribal Court
- Tribal Social Services Division
- Tribal Defenders Office
- Flathead Reentry Program
- Healing Court
- Prosecutors Office
- Tribal Probation and Parole
- Tribal Law and Order
- Tribal Council
