21 Jun 2018
Over the past 10 years, the Osborne Association’s New York Initiative for Children of Incarcerated Parents (NYCIP) has brought together government agencies, and community and faith-based organizations to develop solutions to address the harms of parent-child separation that result from a parent’s arrest and incarceration. For decades, we have offered programs that maintain the parent-child bond during incarceration, and we have brought hundreds of children to visit their incarcerated parents. As an 85-year-old organization, we are deeply aware of the damaging effects of separation on children, we are horrified by the current DOJ policy of taking children from their parents at the US border and we join those calling for the immediate end of this unconscionable practice. The President’s recent Executive Order is a start but is not enough. The more than 2,000 children currently suffering from being separated need to be urgently reunited with their parents and a standing solution and firm, unequivocal commitment to keeping families together is needed.
Continue reading...