Join Dorothy E. Roberts, J.D. and Joyce McMillan for a conversation highlighting the harms, and in particular the damage social workers have caused and continue to perpetuate, within the so-called child welfare system. "Social work and Family Policing" will draw on Professor Roberts' decades of research, culminating in her recent book Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World and Joyce McMillan's years of abolitionist organizing against family policing. This conversation will explore the systemic oppression of the family policing system, especially against poor Black, Indigenous, and Latinae families. We will explore concrete ideas for how social workers and others working with families can adopt an abolitionist approach.

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Speakers:

Dorothy E. Roberts, J.D. is a Professor of Africana Studies, Law, and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is an acclaimed scholar of race, gender and the law whose latest book is Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families--and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World.

Joyce McMillan is a thought leader, advocate, activist, community organizer, and educator. Joyce is the founder and executive director of JMacForFamilies a nonprofit whose mission is to abolish the family policing system while creating concrete community resources in communities of color who are disproportionately affected by systems of harm.

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This event is sponsored by the Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work and Haymarket Books.