Rise magazine is written by parents who have faced the child welfare system in their own lives. Many people don’t know that the majority of children who enter foster care return home to their parents–and that most children in care wish for a lifelong relationship with their parents, whether they live with them or not. Helping parents is fundamental to helping children in foster care.
Through personal essays and reporting, parents illuminate every aspect of the child welfare experience from parents’ perspectives. For professionals, Rise stories offer insight that can improve how you engage and support families. For parents, Rise offers information, peer support, and hope.
On October 22, 2021, Halimah Washington, Rise community coordinator, testified at the New York State Assembly’s Public Hearing on Family Involvement in the Child Welfare System.
In April, the Rise Advisory Board announced that it selected Jeanette Vega Brown and Bianca Shaw as the next leadership of Rise. Here, Jeanette Vega Brown and Bianca Shaw, now co-executive directors of Rise, tell us about who they are, how they got involved in the parent-led movement for family justice, their roles and vision for the organization and what is staying the same at Rise. They also discuss why it is meaningful for Rise to be led by two women of color, including a parent impacted by ACS.
This page offers answers to frequently asked questions about the Rise & Shine program.
This report shares the results of a participatory action research project that Rise conducted in winter 2021 in partnership with TakeRoot Justice. Our research documents parents’ experiences with the family policing system and explores a collective vision to transform our society’s structures, policies and practices related to family and community support.
Imaginative and sometimes painful community conversations with 48 people impacted by ACS provide the foundation of this report. Findings also reflect 58 anonymous surveys by parents impacted by ACS.
Halimah Washington, Community Coordinator, PAR Project Lead
I am a Black Mama from New York City who is directly impacted by the family regulation system with involvement going back multiple generations. My experience with the family policing system speaks to how it stays in people’s lives for multiple generations, never helping, but continuing to cause harm and trauma throughout the generations. I am passionate about this work because Black and brown families deserve to thrive and … Read More
