NEWS & BLOG POSTS
Recent Posts
Reflections on upEND’s 5th Birthday
June 19, 2025
Five years ago, around Juneteenth—a celebration of delayed but hard-won freedom—a small collective of insiders-turned-abolitionists planted the seeds of upEND.
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We must ensure queer and trans youth are supported, affirmed, and loved.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has declared this PRIDE month that we are in a national state of emergency for LGBTQIA+ Americans.
Abolitionist Steps to Build a Better World
Reforms are ineffective at combating racism and harm in part because they do not intend to, but also because they begin with the wrong presumptions.
No Coincidence: Black Family Separations Then and Now
Black families faced an incomprehensible level of pain, anger, confusion, and powerlessness during enslavement. Sadly, when speaking with Black families who have had their children forcibly and involuntarily removed by the family policing system today, too little has changed.
We Know Investing In Families Works. Why Are We Still Investing in Harm?
The family policing system’s punitive approach does not – and cannot – ever authentically heal or prevent anything.
Protect the Indian Child Welfare Act
ICWA protects Indigenous kids by keeping them in the care of extended family or tribes whenever possible.
The 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 Featured In
Confronting the Racist Legacy of the Child Welfare System with Alan Dettlaff
Adoptees Crossing Lines Podcast
News Archive
Fostering tragedy: Experts say system designed to protect children can break up families, CBS Sunday Morning, December 4, 2022
No More Carseats, How Is That Legal? Podcast, July 6, 2022
“It’s Like A Leech On Me”: Child Abuse Registries Punish Unsuspecting Parents Of Color, Buzzfeed News, April 27, 2022
What Did Child Welfare Learn From 2020?, Child Information Gateway Podcast, January 15, 2021,
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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