Rise Magazine

‘When You Have Lived Experience, You Come with a Different Angle’

May 25, 2021 by Rise

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 Magazine

‘Our First Priority Is Making Sure People Are OK’

May 20, 2021 by Keyna Franklin

Fear of the family policing system can prevent families from accessing needed resources and support. Through community-led mutual aid, community members support each other, often responding more quickly than systems and without intrusive processes or the threat of a report to ACS for not having food or resources for your family.

Here, Kelvin Taitt, co-founder of East Brooklyn Mutual Aid and a community organizer in the Ocean Hill and Brownsville areas of Brooklyn, New York, discusses how mutual aid is different from services through the system, building relationships, keeping resources in the community and supporting investment in Black-owned businesses.

News
Someone To Turn To: A Vision for Creating Networks of Parent Peer Care
May 12, 2021 by Rise

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 Magazine
Why We’re Using the Term ‘Family Policing System’
May 07, 2021 by Rise

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.

Rise Magazine
Targeted by Two Systems: ‘I couldn’t focus only on how devastating it was for my child to be hurt and to lose my mother. I also had to worry about ACS.’
April 15, 2021 by Imani Worthy

March 26, 2019 was a day I’ll never forget.

Early that morning, I got a phone call from my sister that our mom was put on life support.

I was a block away at a different hospital dealing with another emergency. A CT scan confirmed that Miles had a potential fracture in his wrist as well as a broken leg. I felt heartbroken and confused.

I couldn’t accompany him to his X-ray or visit my mother. Instead, I had to meet with an abuse doctor and Special Victims Unit detectives.

A week after the X-ray, we had a Child Safety Conference with ACS. Everything neutral was made into a negative.

Around the same time, there was a story in the news about a white actress, Jenny Mollen. She had dropped her son and he fractured his skull. She talked openly about how hard it was for her as a mother and that she was so thankful for the hospital staff. They didn’t question her motives.

Our babies were both hurt unintentionally – but we were treated very differently.