Recent Posts
Reflections on Pride 2024
July 3, 2024
Ending the family policing system and fighting for an abolitionist world necessarily also includes developing a robust platform that centers and amplifies the realities that Black LGBTQ youth face as they navigate carceral systems.
Read More“Dream, Create, Liberate” Afrofuturist Art Book Out Now
June 19, 2024
As we embark on this journey of imagination and liberation, we invited artists to join us in envisioning a world free from family policing.
Read MoreThe Power of Co-Opting: Language Is Changing, But Will It Change the Status Quo?
When we call a system that surveils, regulates, punishes, and forcibly separates families a “child welfare system,” we misconstrue that system’s purpose and actions.
upEND Statement on Texas Governor’s Trans Youth Directive
The upEND Movement opposes any efforts made to represent gender-affirming healthcare as child abuse.
Reproductive Justice Demands the End of Family Policing
Communities gathering to abolish the family policing system are continuing the ongoing struggle against reproductive oppression.
upEND’s New Home, New Faces, Same Goal: Abolish The Family Policing System
Houston, TX (January 20, 2022) —– The upEND Movement is beginning the new year in its new home at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work and expanding our team. We welcome a new program director and communications manager to join us in our ongoing commitment to building a movement of abolishing the […]
Finding Space to Imagine: How White Supremacy Culture Stifles Creativity
How do we collectively and collaboratively create new ways of supporting and caring for families without replicating the coercive structure, surveillance, and separation in other forms?
The upEND Movement Releases How We endUP: Ideas About How We Can, In Community, Move Towards the Abolition of Family Policing
Washington, DC and Houston, TX (June 18, 2021)—Last year, in the shadow of Juneteenth, which commemorates the day news of emancipation from human chattel slavery reached Galveston, Texas in 1866, and during the tumultuous summer of 2020, we launched upEND—a movement to abolish the child welfare system and center the experiences of Black, Native, and […]
Making Possible the Impossible: A Black Feminist Perspective on Child Welfare Abolition
In 1863, Harriet Tubman and eight of her trusted scouts orchestrated the Combahee River uprising in South Carolina. The uprising, which followed a year of planning and organizing, freed almost eight-hundred enslaved people, burned thirty-two planation buildings, and decimated the rice plantations that rested at the center of the state’s economy.[1] The Combahee River uprising […]
On the Road to Abolition: the upEND Movement Releases Three New Resources to Help Reimagine the Child Welfare System
Washington, DC and Houston, TX (September 17, 2020)—The US child welfare system has a long history of structural racism which has led to devastating consequences for Black, Native, and increasingly Latinx children and families. Despite decades of efforts aimed at reform, racism within the system persists. The upEND Movement works to create a society in […]
New Movement Seeks to upEND the Child Welfare System and Create Anti-Racist Supports for Children and Families
Announcing a collaborative movement aimed at protecting Black, Brown, and Native children and reimagining how we serve and support families.
upEND Featured In
What Did Child Welfare Learn From 2020?, January 15, 2021, Child Information Gateway Podcast
New upEND Publication Calls for Fundamental Transformation of Family Policing, July 27, 2021
CPS disproportionately takes custody of Black children, report says, July 26, 2021
Being with Family Is a Human Right: We Can’t and Won’t Deny It, A Second Chance, Inc., December 14, 2020
What It Means to Abolish Child Welfare As We Know It, the Imprint, October 24, 2020
Reimagining Child Welfare Services: A Call to UpEND Child Welfare as We Know It, Children’s Bureau Express, August/September 2020
University of Houston Launches upEND Movement (VIDEO), Fox 26 Houston, July 15, 2020
Now Is the Time for Abolition, the Imprint, June 22, 2020
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