About Rise

Rise trains parents to write about their experiences with the child welfare system in order to support parents and parent advocacy and guide child welfare practitioners and policymakers in becoming more responsive to the families and communities they serve.

Click here to read our 2008-2009 Annual Report.

Click here to donate to Rise

Our Impact

Parent Writers: Our story development process teaches parents writing and critical thinking skills, helps writers organize traumatic experiences and connect with their strengths, provides peer-support, and reduces the shame and stigma of child welfare involvement.

Parent Readers: Rise stories provide parent readers with information about their rights and model the steps they can take strengthen their families. Through our print magazine and website, we reach 18,000 parents, child welfare practitioners and policymakers nationwide.

Child Welfare Practitioners: Rise stories build the empathy and ability of frontline child welfare staff to engage parents effectively. Family support programs, foster care agencies, drug treatment programs and legal services providers use our stories to train child welfare staff and foster parents and to educate and guide parents in support groups and parenting classes.

Child Welfare Policy: Rise stories inform policymakers about the impact of child welfare policies and practices on parents. We collaborate with advocacy organizations and researchers to add parent voice to policy reports, newsletters, conferences and campaigns to reform child welfare policies and practices.

Our Principles

Rise developed through the dedication of parents who believed that their stories could encourage other parents to reunify with their children and force child welfare workers to confront the biases that so often undermine good case practice and policymaking.

Rise began as a collaboration between the Child Welfare Organizing Project (CWOP) and Youth Communication, publisher of Represent, a magazine by youth in foster care, where our stories were initially published as a Parents’ Perspectives column. In 2005, in order to inform and mobilize parents, we began publishing our tri-annual print magazine. Youth Communication became our fiscal sponsor in 2008.

We now work with agencies to use Rise stories in staff training and in parenting education and support groups, and we partner with advocacy organizations to use our stories to educate and guide child welfare policymakers and practitioners.

Our Projects

To develop diverse stories on critical topics, such as immigration, incarceration, preventive services, addiction, domestic violence and parent advocacy, we continue to work closely with the Child Welfare Organizing Project and have collaborated with the following organizations:

• NYC Children’s Services, to develop a booklet of stories by parents and foster parents—about building relationships—that will be used to train staff and foster parents and support parents and Parent-to-Parent meetings.
• Center on Addiction and the Family at Phoenix House and CONNECT (a domestic violence prevention program) to train drug treatment, preventive services and foster care staff to use our stories to support parents.
• Parent support agencies, to use Rise stories to better engage parents in parenting classes and support groups.

To elevate the voices of parents in efforts to reform child welfare policy and practice we partner with:

• The Center for the Study of Social Policy, which is releasing our paper on parents’ perspectives on the impact of ASFA as part of a review of ASFA aimed at federal lawmakers.
• The Correctional Association of New York, which used our issue on incarcerated parents to lobby to change ASFA implementation in New York.
• Child Welfare Watch, a bi-yearly report on New York City’s child welfare system, which reprints Rise stories to bring parents’ perspective to issues such as services for mentally ill parents and changing foster parent roles.
• Newsletters that reprint our stories, such as Casey Family Services’ VOICES; Fostering Perspective, a newspaper for foster parents; Permanency Planning Today, a publication of the National Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice and Permanency Planning; Nurturing Times, a publication of Dads Helping Dads in Spokane, WA; and FOCUS, on therapeutic foster care.

Our Supporters

Rise is supported by the Child Welfare Fund, Hedge Funds Care, the Hite Foundation, New Yorkers for Children, Casey Family Programs, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Van Ameringen Foundation. It is fiscally sponsored by Youth Communication, publisher of Represent.

Our Leadership

Rise is led by an Advisory Board of parents and professionals; the magazine is overseen by an Editorial Board of dedicated parent writers. Rise has worked with more than 75 parents to produce stories, including a core staff of about a dozen writers.

Advisory Board

Mike Arsham, Child Welfare Organizing Project
Teresa Bachiller, Child Welfare Organizing Project
Melissa Baker, Casey Family Programs
Carmen Caban, Editorial Board
Tracey Carter, Rise Editorial Board
Keith Hefner, Youth Communication
Bevanjae Kelley, Rise Editorial Board
Lynne Miller, Rise Editorial Board
Susan Notkin, Center for the Study of Social Policy
Jeanette Vega, Editorial Board
Robin Wiley, Editorial Board
Youshell Williams, Rise Editorial Board

Rise Staff

Director Nora McCarthy founded Rise in 2005. A graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Nora also edited Represent, by and for youth in foster care, and New Youth Connections, by and for New York City public high school students. She has reported for Newsday, City Limits and Child Welfare Watch.

Rise Contributing Writers:

Derrick Alexander Sarah Allen Louis Angel Prince Ariais Evaliz Andrades Jermaine Archer Ruby Awtry Teresa Bachiller Latonya Baskerville Patricia Bennett Eric Benson Carlos Boyet Queenie Butler Carmen Caban Linfa Carrion Emma Cohetero Guadalupe Cohetero David Conyers Jackie Crisp Clarence Davis Jose Disla Sonia Diaz Shatema Dockery Deborah Echevarria Bliss Edwards Kevin Edwards Sandra Evans Ayinde Fair Yadira Fragoso Alicia Gabriel Giovanni Garcia Daisy Gomez Erica Harrigan Diana Henriquez Toni Hoy Pamela Hughes Anthony Isaacs

Jacquelyn Israel Sabra Jackson Robin Larimore Tanya Long Caroline Marrero Maribel Martinez Jacquelyn Matthews-Smallwood Deb McCabe Elizabeth Mendoza Herbert Morales Desiree Navarro Maya Noy Daisy Nunez Carmen Ortiz Denise Outlaw Rosita Pagan Jorge Pardave Margarita Pavon Ilka Perez Sylvia Perez Tere Perez Francisco Ramirez Chrystal Reddick Violet Rittenhour Juan Rodriguez Wanda Rodriguez Evelyn Salazar Milagros Sanchez Vanessa Sanchez Albert Shepherd Waldina Terreros Philneia Timmons Karen Tucker Jeanette Vega Ella Veres Robin Wiley

(back to top)