Our Core Values

We are a social justice organization committed to raising awareness about the need for lasting, unwavering, and progressive change in the child welfare system. The Family Preservation Collective educates professionals and the general community about the benefits of keeping children with their families of origin rather than placing them in foster care. We envision fewer traumatic experiences and more stability in children’s lives. We advocate for a shift in federal, state, and city funding from foster care to preventive services and a more thorough analysis of what really works in child protection and what has not. The detriment of not doing so is too costly to children and the families in which they live and grow.

We offer services which are culturally and socially appropriate to the communities we serve. Our primary outreach is to low-income mothers and fathers of children who are most likely to enter the child welfare system in New York City. This includes youth between the ages of 10 and 21 years old who grew up in care and are more likely to become teen parents and have children who enter foster care. This cyclical behavior must be addressed in order to end generational dysfunction in families.

Our constituency also consists of immigrant families and their children who are entering foster care at an increased rate. By providing educational resources which target these communities, we can ensure that the values of family, self-determination, and self-sufficiency can be preserved in future generations.

Our organizational frame of reference is child centered and at all times informed by what is in the best interest of children. This is an often abused and misdirected term. As family advocates, we reject the adversarial paradigm that views children’s rights in opposition to parental and family rights. Instead, we see the family as an inextricable unit whose interests and rights support the whole.

We are led by the values of faith, self-determination, activism, justice, and the natural sanctity of family relationship. The family is the most basic and essential unit in any society. We envision a network of supports, which honors and values the whole family and sees it as the base for strong communities. Self-sufficient families are the foundation of viable communities. Our world view is that viable and sustainable communities are the core structure of any nation that is meeting the needs of its people. If we believe that a better world is possible, then we must begin by supporting and strengthening families.

Concerned Citizens for Family Preservation/The Family Preservation Collective’s vision is that through the grassroots education and organizing primarily of women who are mothers, and the agitation and subsequent involvement of the community that surrounds them, we will effect change within families and the communities approach to issues which impact on family preservation. Ultimately, the child welfare system will be forced to change the way in which it deals with poorer communities.