Displaying 1 - 10 of 20
This advocacy brief provides an overview of promising practices and lessons learned to end child immigration detention in the U.S. and sets out a range of policy actions needed to scale up efforts to end this form of violence.
This report presents findings from qualitative interviews conducted with English-speaking Latino individuals from the United States who experienced parental deportation between the ages of 6 and 17 years old. They offer suggestions about what they needed following their loss as a child. By understanding what children need in these moments of crisis, practitioners, providers, and others are better prepared to address this form of complex childhood adversity.
Abstract
Experiencing parental deportation during childhood is associated with higher rates of mental health and…
For centuries, Indigenous children were removed from their families and sent to boarding schools or placed in adoptive non-Indigenous families. Hundreds of thousands of American Indian, Alaska Native, Canadian First Nations, Native Hawaiian, and Aboriginal children in Australia were forced to attend Catholic mission schools, where many experienced hunger, violence, forced labor, and sexual abuse. Indigenous parents and children who resisted child-family separation were harshly punished. The goal of forcible removals was to assimilate Indigenous children into Western society, erasing…
The origin story of the Catholic Church in the United States includes a dependency on slave labor and sales to sustain itself and build its institutions. In 1838, a group of America’s most prominent Catholic priests, the Society of Jesuits, sold 272 enslaved people to save Georgetown University, their largest mission project and the first Catholic institution of higher learning in the United States. The sale included the separation of children from parents, a common feature of the slave trade. In the…
Abstract
Background
For children who are not reunified with their biological family members, the child welfare system promotes legal permanence through adoption or guardianship. The intent of adoption and guardianship is a safe home where…
This presentation is by the Children’s Trust Fund Alliance and their colleagues regarding a project they have been working on in partnership with parents to identify alternatives to CPS investigations. Using a participatory action research approach, three foundations (Annie E. Casey, Stand Together, and Aviv Foundation) supported a project to engage with parents as planners, recruiters, and interviewers to reach out to 100 parents across the U.S. who have experienced an initial visit from their local child welfare system.
Ten parents interviewed 100 parents to help better understand their…
“If I Wasn’t Poor, I Wouldn’t Be Unfit”: The Family Separation Crisis in the US Child Welfare System
This report examines removals of children and termination of parental rights by state child welfare systems, focusing primarily on four states: California, New York, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. The number of children removed from their families, the too-often unjust circumstances of removal, and the disproportionate effects on Black and Indigenous families, and those living in poverty, make this a national family separation crisis warranting immediate attention and action. The report finds that child welfare systems too often respond to circumstances of poverty with punishment.
Parents…
Beyond Family: Separation and reunification for young people negotiating transnational relationships
This paper explores perspectives on family reunification and emergent forms of separation among young migrants. These young people lived apart from and later reunited with their migrant parents who moved from the Philippines to Canada for work. The author draws from 15 months of ethnographic, arts-based, and participatory research with ten participants living in Greater Vancouver. While reunification literature and child rights discourse often focus on the process of a mother and child coming back together, this can obscure the relationships that young people form with others in the meantime…
When a major disaster strikes in the United States, the President issues a Presidential Disaster Declaration releasing federal disaster relief funds for the “critical services” necessary to restore local communities. One community service not considered eligible for federal relief funds is childcare. But childcare is a necessary condition for getting communities back to normal routines and parents back to work. Redefining childcare as a critical service is not only good for the educational development of young children but makes it possible for the parents of young children to resume their…
This information packet provides an overview of deportation of family members in families of mixed immigration status in the United States, as it relates to child welfare. The information packet outlines facts and data relevant to immigration, citizenship, and child welfare in the US, provides a background on the political and practice context, describes recent policy action related to deportation and child welfare, and introduces some “best practice tips” for working with mixed immigration status families. The document concludes with recommendations, a brief review of model programming, and…