Rise interviewed Marilyn Reyes, co-director of the Peer Network of New York, about harm reduction peer support as part of our process for developing the report, Someone to Turn To: A Vision for Creating Networks of Parent Peer Care. Here, Marilyn says, “I never tell people what to do. I ask them what they want.”
Rise is building a peer care network that can strengthen families while reducing contact with the family policing system. Rise seeks to do this work collaboratively in New York City in partnership with other community-led organizations, beginning with communities most impacted by ACS (Administration for Children’s Services). We hope you will join us and get involved!
This Insights paper presents Rise’s vision for a peer network of collective care by and for parents. This fall, Rise created a parent Peer Vision Team to explore building a peer care model that can strengthen families while reducing contact with the family policing system.
Nationwide and in New York City, where Rise is based, it’s crucial to broadly reorganize supports for families so that accessing resources and services does not put parents at risk of state intervention in their families. Government dollars should target community conditions, not families. This report shares a vision for one critical component of strong communities: networks of peer support and community care.
Rise is using the term ‘family policing system’ instead of ‘child welfare system’ because our team believes that it most accurately and directly describes the system’s purpose and impact. While Rise has often also used the term “family regulation system”, the Rise staff led by parents who have experienced the system considered this term “too soft” in describing the harmful role of the system in the lives of families it impacts. “Family policing” highlights the system’s connection to and similarities with the criminal justice system, and also explicitly links our work to broader movements to abolish policing.
Parents call on NYC’s next mayor and City Council to reverse our city’s over-investment in family policing and under-investment in communities