upEND is a national movement housed at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work as an initiative that is funded entirely through grants and donations. We rely on the generosity of organizations and individual donors to support and grow this movement.
We create free resources and events to educate community leaders and influence policy and public discourse. Our article “It is not a broken system, it is a system that needs to be broken: the upEND movement to abolish the child welfare system” is the most-read article of all time in the Journal of Public Child Welfare and has been cited over 55 times in other journals.
Since our launch in 2020, we’ve been able to expand our reach through community building online. Our third annual convening reached over 2,600 people and featured keynote speakers Angela Davis and Mariame Kaba, connecting the movement to end family policing to the broader abolition movement.
What we’re proposing—ending the reach and harm of the family policing system, and imagining a safer future—is going to take all of us. Every donation helps us continue to reach abolitionists, activists, and leaders for the future we want to create together.
On June 19, 2020, upEND launched a collaborative movement to protect children and reimagine how to support families. On Juneteenth, a day synonymous with liberation, we invited abolitionists, activists, and families to join us to dismantle the family policing system and work in community to imagine and build new approaches. Together, we have grown, we have learned and shifted the conversation about addressing the harms inherent in the family policing system while centering abolition as the solution. Our 2022 Impact Report tells the story of the first two years since our launch.
