By Chris Cuestas, Consultant, Tribal Youth Resource Center, Tribal Law and Policy Institute
The Tribal Youth Resource Center serves multiple Juvenile Healing to Wellness Courts that have a truancy reduction aspect or provide academic support services for the youth they serve. One such program is The Puyallup Tribe’s Juvenile Healing to Wellness Court (JHWC), which recently hosted a Truancy forum. The idea was to bring both tribal and non-tribal compulsory attendance specialists from as many schools as possible to a tribal community location and exchange policies, codes, protocols, to help tribal youth “transition” back to school amid all the challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Truancy Forum clearly and openly stressed 3 main objectives: 1) Communicate, talk to each other and work on behalf of the tribal youth, not target them for non-attendance; 2) Collaborate, give the tribal programs (Such as JHWC Teams) the opportunity to staff, dialog and support tribal youth and their families before petition filing takes place; and 3) Celebrate successes of family engagement and attendance improvement regardless of how small it may appear to be, in any way possible, including incentives, recognition, or enhanced support.
The root causes of truancy are complex and multi-layered. A MSN News story titled “Millions of Kids Missing” alerted communities that our student population has not totally recovered from the impact of the pandemic. Many schools across the country are dealing with record numbers of youth that simply do not want to return to the public-school setting. A second article by MSN News titled “These Aren’t Snowflake Kids” identified the mental health challenges associated with students’ reluctance to return to school.
For information which may support new or developing truancy prevention programs, see the Tribal Youth Resource Center’s recent (2022) publication Supporting Tribal Youth Attendance Achievement. The publication serves as a primer to assist with understanding issues of chronic absenteeism, truancy, prevention, and intervention processes. It addresses historic education policies and contemporary approaches utilized by Tribal communities to prevent and address truancy among Tribal youth. It also highlights helpful community-based approaches to support program development. The publication additionally includes strategic planning activities to support team-based program development, prevention program strategies to support American Indian and Alaska Native Youth, and helpful resources to support program partnership and community collaboration.
Link to publication: Supporting Tribal Youth Attendance Achievement
