Reimagining Child Welfare Starts With Families
March 28, 2025
RHF recognizes that reimagining child welfare starts with families.
Our partners working in this space engage and support system-impacted youth and parents, allowing them to heal from their experiences and mobilize grassroots action for change.
Rise
Led by people impacted by the child welfare system, Rise empowers parents to be leaders and create communities that invest in families by offering collective care, healing, and support.
From the Ground Up is a new report from Rise and New Tomorrow that describes the tangible benefits of community care networks, peer-to-peer support, and holistic family programming driven by mutual trust and respect.
With funding from RHF and a new federal grant, Rise’s Peer Community Care Network innovative model is reimagining how to connect parents to the information and resources they need to help families address challenges without intervention from ACS.
Rise Peer Supporters assisted more than 40 families in the Bronx neighborhoods last year with high CPS investigation rates and launched a pilot program training 20 youth peer leaders.
Additionally, Rise’s advocacy and organizing team, The Parents’ Platform, released two other reports in 2024 supporting their policy priorities to expand childcare and decrease the harm caused by mandated reporting: The State of Childcare in NY State: A Need for Respite Care and An Analysis of Rise’s Mandated Reporting Surveys & A Call to Action.
HOPE585
HOPE585 is dedicated to creating a relationship-centered community for Rochester youth and families impacted by the child welfare system, helping them transition from trauma to a place of power and belonging.
Last fall, the organization launched the Reimagine Initiative to engage a diverse group of stakeholders in co-designing and sustaining a community-driven response to child poverty issues that often lead to unnecessary child welfare involvement in Monroe County.
Additionally, they hosted a Town Hall, which served as the first public forum in the county where community members could share their experiences with the child welfare system and its impact on local families.
Black Families Love and Unite
Black Families Love and Unite also published a new report, Families Belong Together, Families Demand Repair, that documents perspectives and ideas collected from a 60-person focus group and survey of over 200 system-impacted children and parents.
Liz Artistry contributed a visual rendering of research findings and the organization’s framework for repair and healing.
Photos courtesy of Rise, Hope585. Illustration courtesy of Black Families Love & Unite.