The NYC Family Policy Project (FPP) is a research and policy analysis organization that works from the perspective that child welfare involvement emerges as a symptom when communities are under stress and duress.
While child welfare frameworks treat individual parents as the problem targeted for improvement, FPP recognizes that targeting community conditions and investing in community health can better serve the majority of families as well as improve the overall health of our city. FPP will bring together researchers, parents and youth with lived expertise, advocates, allies and disruptors working on the ground in impacted communities to develop research-driven transformative policy solutions for NYC families.
Recent Work
Context Corner
Context Corner: Race, Foster Care and the Politics of Abandonment in New York City
Each month, Tricia summarizes and comments on selected child welfare articles, exploring the history of contemporary child welfare policies and practices and the research that... Read More
Deep Dive
How NYC’s child welfare system is currently funded and how funding can shift
The majority of federal, state and local dollars now spent on child welfare in NYC are flexible funds that do not need to be spent... Read More
Deep Dive
Lifting barriers to government funding of innovative, community-driven approaches
Government funding is crucial to large-scale social change, as the funds available far outweigh private philanthropy. Most grassroots organizations can’t scale their work above about... Read More
Interview
Community Policymaking: Cameryn Okeke, Vera Institute for Justice, and Saadiq Bey, Kings County DA’s Office
‘If we are trying to transform public life, we have to transform the process of making policy. Equitable and just policy has to have a... Read More
Interview
Community-Led Youth-Centered Neighborhood Planning: Damon Rich and Jae Shin, Hector
‘There’s always a tension around both wanting to bring young people into the process and being uncomfortable and resistant to what young people actually say.... Read More
Interview
A Healing Agenda for NYC: Talib Hudson, The New Hood
‘I think a new hood is possible if people have the space to dream it and the tools to achieve it. So the first step... Read More
Interview
Restorative Justice Approaches to Harm: Danielle Sered, Common Justice
“Nobody stays safe alone. Nobody transforms alone. We do a lot of relationship-building. We keep bringing more people into the circle: neighbors, family, friends, clergy.... Read More
Interview
Collective Action as Healing: Anna Ortega-Williams, Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
“There’s so much promise in collective action as healing. Communities are social, we’re social creatures. When we’re together, that’s how we heal.” In recent years,... Read More
Leadership
Nora McCarthy, Co-Founder
Nora was the founder and director of Rise, a NYC parent advocacy organization, for 16 years. Nora also edited the citywide youth newspaper New Youth Connections (NYC) and a magazine by teens in foster care, Represent. She is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and has written for publications including Newsday, Slate, The Appeal, and Child Welfare Watch. Nora is an adviser to Rise; a member of the Steering Committee of United Family Advocates; a board member of the International Parent Advocacy Network; and a member of the Narrowing the Front Door Work Group to reduce child welfare involvement in NYC.
Tricia Stephens, Co-Founder
Tricia is an Assistant Professor at the Hunter College Silberman School of Social Work. She holds a PhD from New York University and specializes in the effects of historical and contemporary trauma on mental health functioning for people of the African Diaspora and on child welfare, particularly the intersection of parental trauma exposure and family stability. Tricia has practiced as a social worker in NYC for over 20 years, in child welfare and mental health settings. Tricia serves in an advisory capacity to several grassroots and community-based parent serving organizations in NYC and is a co-chair of the Narrowing the Front Door Work Group to reduce child welfare involvement in NYC.