Stop tearing America's families apart

On Nov. 18, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held its first hearing to “examine the extent to which racial disparities” exist in New York’s so-called “child welfare” system. That same week, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union released a national report calling the system’s impact on Black, Indigenous and people living in poverty “a national crisis warranting immediate attention and action.” And just days later, news broke of a never-released audit from 2020 confirming extensive racial bias and harm to families by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, the very agency supposedly charged with protecting children.

All this comes as the U.S. marks 25 years since the enactment of the country’s most consequential child welfare policy law: the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA). Our collective experience of representing nearly 40,000 New York City parents over the past 15 years makes clear that ASFA must be repealed.

View the full New York Daily News article here.

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