Abolish the Family Policing System (”Child Welfare”) – Joyce McMillan & Victoria, MSW

Episode 51
Guests: Joyce McMillan; Victoria, MSW
Host: Shimon Cohen, LCSW

Joyce McMillan, Founder and Executive Director of JMac for Families and Parent Legislative Action Network, and Victoria, a PhD candidate at UCLA and community organizer, discuss the family policing system—commonly known as the child welfare system—and their abolitionist work. They explain how the system targets families in poverty, disproportionately harms Black, Brown, and Indigenous families, and functions as a carceral system of surveillance and control. Drawing on their personal experiences, they highlight the lack of rights for parents, the misuse of mandatory reporting, and the need to shift from separation to true family support. Together, they call for a complete transformation rooted in justice and care.

In this episode:

• Why this system is more accurately called the family policing system
• How the system targets families in poverty and disproportionately harms Black, Brown, and Indigenous families
• The history of racist social control in the creation and operation of this system
• Mandatory reporting, predictive analytics, and the lack of Miranda rights for parents
• What it would look like to truly support families rather than separate them

Joyce
https://jmacforfamilies.org/
X @JMacForFamilies
Instagram jmacforfamilies

Victoria
www.veephd.blog

https://upendmovement.org/
https://stoplapdspying.org/
Transformative Justice Handbook
https://www.lovewithaccountability.com/

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Music credit
"District Four" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/