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AUGUSt 2023 / the city / read here
New Yorkers contacted by ACS have rights they can assert, but few know what they are, or how to use them.
That was the case with Aaliya Ingram, a mom [and graduate of JMACforFamilies’ H.E.A.L. Program] who lived with her then-5-year-old daughter in Queens in 2017 when ACS came to their apartment after the child’s school principal reported her for missing school. The worker, Ingram said, told her that if she cooperated and spoke transparently, the case would be cleared up quickly. In a two-hour-long visit, Ingram “overshared” that she occasionally smoked marijuana; a drug test a few days later confirmed it.
“I didn’t know that she was building a case against me,” she said. “It’s a level of betrayal, right? Like, this high level of betrayal.”
AUGUSt 2023 / in these times / read here
“The first thing [detractors] say is, ‘What about the children that really need help?’” says [Joyce] McMillan, who experienced the system firsthand when CPS temporarily removed her children in the 1990s. But in a bloated child welfare system that takes too many children into state custody, where social workers routinely juggle too many cases, more serious abuse often falls between the cracks. “So it’s not about ‘what about the children who need help?’ — it’s about how to get the people who need help real help, and leave the other people alone.”
AUGUSt 2023 / the imprint / read here
“When Angela Burton was fired last month, the top advisor to the New York state court system wanted people to know why. Burton has given public talks on child welfare reform nationwide and abroad, highlighting the growing calls for a radical rethinking of how this country views its foster care system: less as a protector of abused children than a destructive force for low-income families of color. As a rare insider making such claims publicly, Burton says her planned remarks to members of Congress in the U.S. Capitol and to a civil rights panel of prominent New Yorkers cost her a job.
…
“You may be a good person, with a desire to make change from the inside,” New York activist Joyce McMillan stated in a tweet, “but you will be fired if you attempt to make real change from the inside.”
June 2023 / THE IMPRINT / read here
According to a document the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) sent privately to lawmakers, the child welfare agency did not want city workers to be required to notify parents that they have the “right” to decline an interview and to decline allowing their children to be interviewed or physically examined. The city also did not want caseworkers to be required to tell parents they can refuse a drug test or mental health evaluation when a court order has not been presented.
Child welfare agency officials also proposed a more narrow version of what caseworkers should be compelled to tell parents. They wanted the wording of the bill changed so that city workers would be required to provide “information,” but requested that the word “rights” be removed.
…
“This is about the Constitution, and no one else has to negotiate the Constitution” - Joyce McMillan
June 2023 / Propublica / read here
“The New York State Legislature could by the end of this week pass groundbreaking legislation requiring child protective services agents to read people their constitutional rights, just like the police have to do.
But New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, despite publicly claiming to support the “family Miranda warning,” has in recent weeks quietly proposed gutting the measure, according to eight lawmakers, staffers and lobbyists involved in the negotiations.”
June 2023 / The imprint / read here
“Two years ago, as the pandemic raged all around her, a Brooklyn mother of three had a terrifying visit to her home — a child welfare worker investigating an anonymous report to New York’s child protection hotline claiming she had starved her kids.
Over the coming months, a caseworker from New York City’s Administration for Children and Families repeatedly showed up unannounced to Shalonda Curtis Hackett’s apartment, inspecting the refrigerator and bedrooms while her children stood by and watched. Hackett said the caseworker never informed her she could refuse entry or have a lawyer present.”
May 2023 / Law & Disorder radio / listen here
Desseray Wright, Impacted Parent and Policy Advocate at the Bronx Defenders, and Sarah Duggan, Manager of Communications at JMACforFamilies, joined Cat Brooks to discuss the family policing system and the importance of the Family Miranda Rights Act.
May 2023 / Columbia social work review / read here
“This paper seeks to strengthen the historical understanding of the social work profession’s complicity in the creation of the modern family policing system, commonly known as the child welfare system. In particular, this paper explores the impacts of the anti-communist movements on social work advocacy and practice during crucial periods of racial and economic reckoning, with an emphasis on the profession’s complicity with the 1960s-era criminalization of the Black family structure.”
May 2023 / The Appeal / read here
“In testimony at a meeting of the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in January, Joyce McMillan, the executive director of JMACforFamilies, a nonprofit organization seeking to abolish and replace the current family regulation system, said that the current approach to “child welfare” is designed to “look like the prison industrial complex.”
McMillan’s own children were removed from her care more than two decades ago. In her eyes, family regulation agencies like ACS do “the exact same thing to children and families that they do to prisoners,” she said. “Strip-searching them, separating them from everyone and everything they know and love, feeding them what they want to feed them, having them change homes using garbage bags and pillow cases.”
May 2023 / The Appeal / read here
“Although some agency employees have supported calls for Family Miranda legislation, the agencies themselves have opposed these efforts due to concerns that they could make it harder to discover child abuse. But if less than 4 percent of ACS investigations in New York City uncover a child safety concern, this hardly seems like a justification for systematically infringing on families’ rights. Furthermore, unnecessary investigations—which can inflict lasting trauma on a child—should themselves be understood as a threat to children’s well-being. With all of this in mind, the opposition to this legislation seems less about child safety than maintaining the system’s ability to police, criminalize, and control Black and Latine families.”
March 2023 / Family Court Review / read here
“Drawing on the authors’ experiences and perspectives as Black women with personal lived expertise and professional practice with the so-called child protection or child welfare system, and referencing the limited literature that examines parents’ experiences in child protection courts, this Article explores how judges’ exercise of discretion perpetuates anti-Black racism in the family policing system and suggests ways child protection judges can consciously exercise their discretion to mitigate harm and maximize due process, accountability, and justice for Black children and families.”
December 2022 / Boston Globe / read here
“Violet’s family was always on her mind. But in the monthly child safety conferences - which included the Child Protective Services caseworker, the school psychologist, the therapist, me, and sometimes the foster parent or Violet’s mom - not once did we discuss how desperately Violet missed her family. Her foster parent wanted her on medication to stop the tantrums. That’s also not unusual'; psychotropic medications are prescribed to 1 in 3 foster children, as young as preschoolers. Violet’s tantrums in class meant she was pulled out so often that she was behind in every subject - another common occurrence for kids in her situation; in state standardized testing, students in foster care score 16 to 20 percentile points lower than the rest of their cohort.
And yet, in conferences, we always talked about the tantrums without talking about what she was telling us: how badly she wanted to be home with her family.
October 2022 / ProPublica + NBC News / Read Here
“The draft report was obtained from the city via a Freedom of Information request by the Bronx Defenders, a nonprofit that represents parents in family court. The report, prepared by a consulting firm that helped governments design more racially equitable systems, was based on conversations with those who chose to participate rather than on a quantitative survey.
The report, said Joyce McMillan, executive director of JMac for Families, which advocates for families with A.C.S. cases, reveals an agency “targeting certain demographics” using tactics “based on surveillance and not the actual protecting of a child.”
“The report also tells us that their own workers are not comfortable doing this stuff and that they feel choked into submission,” she said.”
October 2022 / ProPublica + NBC News / Read Here
“By law, ACS caseworkers are not allowed to enter and search a home without either permission to enter or an entry order, which is the legal equivalent of a search warrant, unless a child is in imminent danger. But many parents don’t know that they have the right to deny these government agents or don’t push back for fear of losing their children, according to parents and their advocates. And caseworkers frequently say things that are coercive and manipulative in order to get inside homes without going to a judge, according to interviews with more than three dozen former ACS workers, New York City Family Court judges, parents, children and attorneys.
A ProPublica and NBC News investigation found that the agency obtains an average of fewer than 94 entry orders a year to inspect homes, meaning it has a warrant less than 0.2% of the time.”
October 2022 / nbc nightly news / watch here
“In an NBC News-ProPublica investigation, Kate Snow takes a deep dive into New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services searches. She spoke with one mother, Shalonda Curtis-Hackett, who explains why she felt she “couldn’t say no” when a caseworker came to search her house.”
September 2022 / Rewire News Group / read here
“‘We know from decades of research that the same risks factors for being unable to access an abortion are the same risk factors for being investigated and reported to child protection authorities,” Wali said.
Not only does a lack of access to abortion care and entanglement in the family policing system stem from the same risk factors, banning and restricting abortion has a causal link with the poverty that yields the state-sanctioned separation of Black and Indigenous families. Wali pointed out an amicus brief filed in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe, by 150 economists that showed the causal relationship between banning abortion and poverty.
“As soon as someone gives birth, their [expected] lifetime earnings drop by one-third throughout their lives,” Wali said. “Poverty itself is criminalized by the family regulation system. Hardships, homelessness, housing instability, and lack of food, child care, and clean laundry can lead to a report [of child neglect or abuse]. So when there is a specific relationship between banning abortions and causing poverty, and then you’re using poverty as a grounds to take people’s children. That link is not well explored by the mass public at this moment.”
September 2022 / The New Republic / Read Here
“Jasmine Wali, the director of advocacy at JMacForFamilies, explained, “Social workers are still going to put people in jail if they’re in crisis,” if that crisis isn’t easy to handle, and they can’t “just talk the person down.” In homeless shelters, staff members trained in social work call the police “on everything,” just as they do in group homes for children in the foster care system “if a child misses curfew, or a child is throwing things or having a tantrum.” Social workers administer urinalyses or other drug tests, which can result in people losing eligibility for social services…
“Oh, so you want to be put in jail nicely?” said Kamaria Excell, who works with JMacForFamilies. “Cuz that’s all that’s going to happen.… I’m not gonna show up necessarily with a gun.… I’m gonna have my sweater and my notebook,” but “you’re going to jail.” Backed against a wall—or just following the protocols of the agency or nonprofit that employs them—the social worker calls the police.”
September 2022 / NY Magazine / Read Here
It was the third permutation of [JMAC]’s HEAL program, a 12-week workshop to help these mothers — the session I attended was all mothers — process what they had experienced and then train them for activism and talking to the media. JMAC for Families has been lobbying for New York State to pass a package of legislation that includes ending anonymous reporting of child-welfare complaints (though keeping them confidential) and Miranda rights for parents being visited by caseworkers.
The instructor [Deidra Brooks] began with an ice breaker. “If you’re writing a book about your life, what would you call it? And what would you want readers to take away from it?” The titles seemed to come easily to the women. I’m A Survivor, chiefly about putting your faith in God. She Moved On, with the lesson being life is difficult but you don’t dwell, and I Won’t Give Up and Reborn and Battling a Broken System. Knockout, its author said, would be about “my life, but I would also write about knowing your rights.” ACS Took My Childhood and Now They’re Taking My Children needed no explanation. McMillan’s was Catapulted, because ACS wanted her to be a victim and instead she became “a monster for change.”
September 2022 / The Gothamist / Read Here
The bus ads are part of McMillan’s ongoing efforts to change public perception of the child welfare system. She found a kind of inspiration in the advertisements from child welfare agencies and advocates across the country, including ACS, which have invested in subway ads, videos, and radio spots calling on bystanders to report child abuse.
“Why do people believe that ACS and CPS across this nation protects children? Because they have great marketing," she said.
September 2022 / The Gothamist / Read Here
Though alcohol and marijuana use are now on a level playing field under the letter of the law, attorneys say they frequently diverge in its execution.
Families and those who support them say the promise of equity for Black and Latino people that came with cannabis legalization has been elusive.
“Slavery has been replaced with what we call today ‘systems,’” said Joyce McMillan, a fierce critic of ACS and founder and executive director of JMacForFamilies, which advocates for parents in the child welfare system. “If you look at who’s disproportionately impacted by systems, it’s Black, brown, and poor people.”
July 2022 / Law 4 Black Lives / Watch Here
JMAC For Families presents Abolishing the Family Policing System at the Lawyering For Liberation conference, hosted by Law 4 Black Lives
March 2022 / Network To Advance Abolitionist Social Work / Watch Here
A conversation between Jasmine Wali and Nikita Rahman about Mandated Supporting! The ethical and professional responsibilities of social workers and mandated reporters are to support families, however, the current, ambiguous system of mandated reporting does not accomplish this. Instead, it perpetuates a myriad of systemic abuses that exist within child welfare, especially in BIPOC and poor communities. Learn about ways in which the role of a “mandated reporter” may be transformed to a “mandated supporter” including alternative approaches to ensuring child welfare through the provision of family resources and support.
March 2022 / doin’ the work podcast / listen here
We talk about the need to abolish the family policing system. Joyce and Victoria explain why they call this system the family policing system, drawing parallels to how prison and carceral systems function. They talk about how much of family policing is an attack on families in poverty – the majority of neglect reports are actually for situations due to poverty and have nothing to do with someone’s ability to parent. They talk about how the family policing system disproportionately harms Black, Brown, and Indigenous families, and how there is a history of racist social control in the creation of this system and its present-day operation, including predictive analytics and mandatory reporting.
January 2022 / am 1240 wgbb / Listen here
Our guests on After the Kids Move In, Jasmine Wali and Kamaria Excell, both work with JMacForFamilies on a project called "Mandated Supporters." Jasmine and Kamaria share their experiences about how "mandated reporting" was being taught to students in social work school and how they created a curriculum called "Mandated Supporters" to help social workers understand better that their role.
October 2021 / NY DAILY NEWS / READ FULL ARTICLE
“How is he going to [fight racism] if he doesn’t want parents to know their rights?” McMillan told The News at the rally. “ACS’ resistance to this, saying that it would impede their investigations, shows that their investigations hinge on trampling on people’s rights.”
October 2021 / digis mak / READ FULL ARTICLE
Joyce McMillan, child welfare advocate, and executive director of the organization JMac For Families, criticized the abuses suffered by many families who are contacted and harassed by child service agency officials without even letting them know their rights.
“We are not asking to change parental rights. We are not asking to expand them. We are not asking to trade them. We are asking to be informed what they are” said the activist, who was supported by the testimony of another mother who reported having been threatened that the police would be sent to her home if she did not collaborate with ACS.
October 2021 / imprint news / READ FULL ARTICLE
Thursday marked a raucous day of hearings in New York City, with parents protesting outside city and state chambers on the overreach of the child welfare system, and lawmakers pledging to make some of their proposed reforms.
At issue was a package of bills to preserve parents’ rights, which is moving sluggishly through local and state legislative bodies. The key proposal is a Miranda-style bill that would require child protection workers to inform parents of their right to legal counsel at the start of an investigation for possible abuse or neglect.
May 2021 / imprint news / READ FULL ARTICLE
Lawmakers joined New York City parents Monday for a virtual rally in support of an ambitious reform package that would bar anonymous child abuse and neglect reports, arm parents with Miranda-style rights when they are accused and require written consent for drug testing new and expecting mothers in hospitals. If the bills can overcome concerns about child safety and are signed into law, the statewide legislation would significantly expand due process protections for families at risk of foster care removals.
January 2021 / imprint news / READ FULL ARTICLE
“Calls to dismantle child welfare systems that disproportionately impact Black families grew this week, as a group of roughly 100 parents, lawyers and even city social workers gathered on Martin Luther King Jr. Day beneath a new East Harlem billboard with a confrontational message: ‘Some cops are called caseworkers.’”
DECEMBER 2020 / MOTHER JONES / READ FULL ARTICLE
“For Joyce McMillan, implicit bias training just recycles money back into a multi-billion-dollar system. Instead, she would like to see that money go directly to families to help them get stable housing, access to medical care, and food on the table. McMillan doesn’t even like to call it the child protective services system. She calls it the ‘family regulation system.’ For Montauban it’s the ‘family destruction system.’”
AUGUST 2020 / BRONX NEWS 12 / WATCH FULL STORY
“A ‘Black Families Matter’ march in the Bronx Sunday condemned the Administration for Children’s Services – commonly known as Child Protective Services – claiming that the agency polices a system that ravages families in communities of color.
JULY 2020 / NBC NEWS / READ FULL ARTICLE
Significant and warranted attention has been focused on the school-to-prison pipeline and the foster care-to-prison pipeline, but there is a related and lesser-known police-to-foster care pipeline that is often the starting point for the destruction of families and horrific long-term outcomes for children, particularly Black children.
JUNE 2020 / NY DAILY NEWS / READ FULL ARTICLE
“Joyce McMillan founded the Parents Legislative Action Network (PLAN) after she was wrongly accused of mistreating her son more than two decades ago. Fighting for her family taught her how the system is stacked against poor women of color.“No more hiding behind the guise of protecting children when the only thing you’re protecting them from is success,” McMillan said.”
APRIL 2020 / THE CITY / READ FULL ARTICLE
Parents Expecting iPad Deliveries Got Knock on Door From Child Welfare Workers
CITY & STATE NEW YORK, JOYCE MCMILLAN NAMED TO THE 2019 NONPROFIT POWER 100 / READ ARTICLE
“Joyce McMillan advocates for parents dealing with a child welfare system that disproportionately targets black and Latino families – and it seems her efforts may end up transforming New York state’s approach to child welfare. “
YOUTH TODAY / JUNE 2019 / READ FULL ARTICLE
“The advocates, led by reformer Joyce McMillan, formerly of the Child Welfare Organizing Project, seek to enshrine the recommendations of the recent Commission on Parental Legal Representation into state law.”
WNYC NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO / DECEMBER 2018 / READ FULL ARTICLE
“Overwhelming, the families entangled with ACS are black or Latino. Even the agency admits to the problem of racial disparity. That’s partly why Joyce McMillan, a parent advocate and visiting fellow at The New School, said the social-media campaign frightened her.”
SALON / MAY 2018 / READ FULL ARTICLE
How the media portrays black and white drug users differently- NYT’s sympathetic coverage of white mom struggling with opioids contrasts with its hysteria over ‘crack babies’.
LEGISLATIVE GAZETTE /FEBRUARY 2018 / READ FULL ARTICLE
Neglect and abuse are not the same thing. Children who are neglected have parents who need help in taking care of them. We need services to raise up these families as a unit — children belong with their families.