NTFD newsletter

September 2025

NARROWING THE FRONT DOOR

An Anti-Racist Approach to Shrinking New York City’s Child Welfare System and Promoting Black Child, Family, and Community Wellbeing

Welcome to the Narrowing the Front Door newsletter! Here you’ll hear about events, resources, and information.

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WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING

Action Alert

Acknowledging Harm -- a City Council Resolution 

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Over the summer, City Council member Althea Stevens introduced Resolution 0935-2025 calling on the City to finally recognize the deep harm caused to Black and Latinx families by decades of destructive family policing practices and policies. The Resolution acknowledges the racism and harms caused by the child welfare system and other government systems in current practice and going back to chattel slavery. As part of Narrowing the Front Door’s 2022 Report and Community Recommendations, the Workgroup made two key recommendations to the Mayor and New York City leadership:

•  To acknowledge the harm that has been done to our city’s Black and Latinx families, most living in conditions of poverty, by the family policing system.
• The City establish a community-run, City government funded Family Regulation System Accountability Council.

Narrowing the Front Door’s priorities center on holding government accountable for the negative impact of its actions on Black and Latinx families by ending harmful government interference that has disrupted, separated, and destroyed families. The Resolution, if passed, would officially recognize the harms caused and call for government accountability. This is a step in the right direction to repair past harms and prevent future harms. 

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City Council member Althea Stevens plans to have a hearing on the Accountability Council resolution sometime in October. Stay tuned for more details on the hearing. 

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Change doesn’t happen without community power. This is your moment to come together, share your stories, and push the city to take accountability and invest in real support for families.

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Your voice matters:

We’re calling on parents, youth, advocates, and allies to provide testimony at the hearing on the resolution to acknowledge harm. Your lived experiences can help move this work forward and shape a future where NYC families and children are met with care, resources, and trust, not surveillance and fear. 

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What’s Next:

Narrowing the Front Door will host a webinar to help you understand what the resolution means for communities and how we work together to demand accountability. 

Please join us on October 13, 2025 from 12:00-1:30pm for a webinar to discuss the proposed City Council resolution. The webinar will explore how we can dismantle barriers that keep targeted communities from accessing the resources they need. We will also discuss the resolution and what you can do to testify and support its passage. We look forward to hearing your feedback on the issue of New York City recognizing institutional and systemic racism and generations of harm embedded in today’s child protective services (CPS) systems.

Register Here

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Urban Matters | Pandemic Lockdown Traumas Were Temporary. Child Welfare Traumas Have Lasting Effects

Photo by Imprintnews.com

The Center for New York City Affairs' visiting fellow Courtnie McMillan discusses the ongoing, indefinite, deeply damaging trauma inflicted by the family policing system and the negative effects of family separation on Black and Brown families. In this piece, McMillan shares her lived experiences while arguing for systemic reforms that shift from surveillance and punishment to community-based supports, more transparency, rights for families, and the acknowledgment of harm. According to McMillan, “the pandemic offers a powerful lesson for both the public and policymakers because it provides a window into the cruelty of alienation that many families endure daily under the so-called child welfare system or, as the family advocacy movement more accurately calls it, the “family policing system.” While Covid-era isolation was understood as temporary and necessary, the isolation imposed by the family policing system is indefinite and punitive.”

In the article, McMillan also highlights the work of Narrowing the Front Door, JMACforFamilies and Narrowing the Front Door’s work of the Accountability Council with the Commission on Racial Equity (CORE). 

Read Here

Commission on Racial Equity Announces Lawsuit Over Delayed Racial Equity Plan

Photo by Courtnie McMillan

On August 20, 2025, the Commission on Racial Equity (CORE) stood with advocates, youth leaders, public officials, and community members on the steps of City Hall to announce a lawsuit against Mayor Eric Adams’ administration for failing to release the City’s long overdue racial equity plan. The plan, which was legally required to be drafted and shared by January 16, 2024 remains incomplete more than 500 days later. Speakers, including Linda Tigani, Executive Director and Chair of CORE, Jennifer Jones Austin, chair of the Racial Justice Commission, Council Member Dr. Nantasha Williams, Council Member Christopher Marte, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, Assembly Member Khaleel Anderson, CORE’s Commissioners Yesenia Marta and Reverend Kirsten John Foy, Joyce McMillan Executive Director and Founder of JMACforFamilies and Co-Chair of Narrowing the Front Door, youth speakers from the Circle Keepers, Matt Gonzalez from the Racially Just Public Schools, and Andrew G. Celli, Jr., a partner with the ECBAWM law firm. The speakers highlighted the ongoing racial and systemic inequity in education, health care, and housing, emphasizing the urgent need for change. 

The lawsuit asks the court to order the release of the plan and declare the administration’s delay illegal. While Mayor Adams’ office has dismissed the case as “misguided”, no release date for the plan has been provided. Advocates see this as a disregard for the needs of New Yorkers.

For CORE and partner organizations such as Narrowing the Front Door, the City’s racial equity plan is not just a document, it is meant to serve as a roadmap toward a more equitable New York City. Joyce McMillan, Executive Director and Founder of JMACforFamilies and Co-Chair of Narrowing the Front Door, addressed the crowd: 

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“NYC is failing at achieving justice for all humans of this city. Our current Mayor has the power to move the needle towards justice by keeping his word and releasing the racial equity plan. As the co-chair of Narrowing the Front Door (NFTD), I can say with confidence one of the best things we have done is partner with CORE to bring awareness and positive change to Government agencies and their agents who use taxpayer dollars to create chaos within communities that have been redlined, communities that face structural barriers that prevent success built into daily operations.”

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Joyce McMillan’s speech

Gothamist:Lawsuit asks court to prod Mayor Adams on long-overdue racial equity plan for NYC

Why Are Advocates Calling for the Repeal of CAPTA?

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This episode of Torn: A Podcast about racial disparities in child welfare, takes a critical look at the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), enacted 50 years ago with the intent to protect children.  CAPTA is now seen by many parents and advocates as the law that created a  punitive system which disproportionately harms Black families and poor communities. 

Guests to the show, Angela O. Burton, Attorney, Founder and Co-Convener of Repeal CAPTA Workgroup, and Co-Chair of Narrowing the Front Door, and Angeline Montauban, Educator and Social Justice Activist make the case that reform isn’t enough, CAPTA must be repealed. Burton and Montauban agree, explaining that under CAPTA, poverty is often treated as neglect. This, in turn, fuels invasive surveillance of families, and inflates the foster-system industry where children too often face even greater harm. Burton further explains,  “the operations of the system are based on four core components: mandated reporting, investigations, prosecution, and court-ordered mandated treatment.” She adds that within these four components, child welfare is never mentioned, instead the entire process is treated as a prosecution. There was a consensus during this conversation that parents need to better understand how the system criminalizes families living in poverty or needing support. Among the ways this “child protective” system survives is by keeping people quiet–which is why sharing stories and having open conversations like this is so important.

Listen Here

Burton also presents the repeal CAPTA argument in this journal article: Toward Community Control of Child Welfare Funding: Repeal the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and Delink Child Protection From Family Well-Being

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Reimagining Family Support in NYC

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Narrowing the Front Door is partnering with the NYC Innovation Team (I-Team) to facilitate a Learning Community dedicated to reimagining how families are supported across the city. Together, we are laying the groundwork for a coordinating entity and a set of strategies that will guide future investments in family and community well-being. The Learning Community is a group made up of individuals from various community organizations and individuals with lived experience who are providing valuable input that will help shape this process and concept. 

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Our vision:

• Elevate community power by strengthening community-led planning, governance, and funding structures.

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• Reshape Administration for Children’s (ACS) role by scaling back to its core legal functions (investigation and prosecution of alleged child maltreatment), while reducing the harm caused to children and families.

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Our work focuses on:

• Mapping the current landscape of family support programs, resources, agencies, funding streams, and community planning projects across NYC.
• Researching best practices, case studies, and models that can inform a stronger approach.
• Engaging NYC leadership to shape the vision collectively. 
• Building partnerships that bring in expertise from behavioral science to operations, and funding to strengthen the work.

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The Learning Community is designed to expand New York City’s investment in holistic, culturally responsive, and trusted family supports, with particular attention to neighborhoods most impacted by family policing and child welfare interventions. We’ll share the Learning Community’s recommendations in the winter. 

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Anti-Harassment

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Anonymous calls to the State Central Registry (SCR) are  often weaponized through false reports that trigger invasive investigations that tear families apart and leave countless children and parents with long-lasting emotional scars. A bill sponsored by Assembly member Andrew Hevasi and Senator Jabari Brisport, and passed by the New York State Legislature takes direct aim at this problem by changing anonymous reporting to confidential reporting, that is requiring that the caller’s name and contact information be provided but kept from the person who is being reported. The bill now requires approval from Governor Kathy Hochul. The bill provides safeguards to ensure that legitimate child safety concerns are effectively reported, for example: 

• Hotline callers would be transferred to a supervisor if they refuse to provide their name to the complaint.
• The supervisor would be required to explain to the caller that state and local governments

are required to keep their personal information confidential, unless instructed otherwise by a judge. 

• If the caller still refuses to provide their contact information, the supervisor would be required to direct them to local services, including 911 in the event of an active emergency or the OCFS HEARS Family Line that connects families in need with food, housing and other services.

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Shalonda Curtis-Hackett, Community Outreach Coordinator, Family Defense Practice–Neighborhood Defender Services of Harlem, and of Narrowing the Front Door has been continuously fighting for Anti-Harassment. Curtis-Hackett has convened an upstate and downstate cross-advocacy meeting of youth and families impacted by the system, family policing advocates, Defender organizations (family defense, children's defense) foster placement advocates, Domestic Violence/Intimate Partner Violence (DV/IPV) led organizations, local community-based organizations, and the senator's office to ensure the bill is signed by the governor. 

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Additionally, groups have been meeting with the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS), and the Governor's office to share experiences, real data and clear up any misconception about Anti-Harassment. If you would like to join the meetings, please email FDPpolicy@ndsny.org

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Read more here

News 6 Albany: Lawsuit asks court to prod Mayor Adams on long-overdue racial equity plan for NYC

Gothamist: Should NY ban anonymous child abuse reports? It’s up to Gov. Hochul

The Imprint: anti-harassment in reporting Archives 

Support for the Anti-Harassment in Reporting Bill

Upcoming Events

The Future of Birthing is Now

Mother Wit 2025

Please join the 11th Annual Mother Wit Conference on October 25, 2025. This convening will focus on conversations about reproductive health, examining how current policies and the broader social and political climate impact access to care and shape health outcomes for racialized, marginalized, and immigrant communities.

The event will include opening and closing ceremonies, a plenary discussion, focus groups, artistic performances, community resource tables, raffles, giveaways, and the chance to network.

• Location: SUNY Downstate, 395 Lennox Road, Brooklyn, New York.
• Format: Both in-person and virtual attendance are available.
• Time: 10:00am-2:30pm
• Cost: The conference is free to attend.

Register Here

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Save the Date: 

Putting Families First: The Other Side of the Reckoning

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Join us for an urgent conversation on Putting Families First: The Other Side of the Reckoning. This event will explore how social service agencies are reckoning with the harms of the family policing system, and trying to better respond to families needs– moving from pariahs to partnership, and centering resources and support. 

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This gathering, co-sponsored with Graham-Windham, is about envisioning and building a future where families are met with trust and support, not surveillance and punishment. As we continue to reckon with the past and work toward a future grounded in family justice and integrity, it is crucial that we reimagine child and family well-being and how we respond to families' real needs. 

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Date: November 5, 2025

Time: 10:00AM -1:00PM

Location: The New School Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, NYC

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Stay tuned for more details.

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