Core Values

Children Belong with Family

Family separation is a traumatic experience that causes lifelong consequences for children, parents, and communities. It is an intervention that must be used extremely sparingly and only when no feasible alternatives exist to protect children from immediate harm if they remain with their parents or caregivers. The creation of feasible alternatives to family separation, and support for children’s lifelong familial relationships if separation is essential, are moral imperatives.

Find Common Ground

As we work toward lasting change in entrenched systems that harm children and families, we value open dialogue and cooperation across the political spectrum. We strive to embody respect, understanding and appreciation for the values, diverse experiences, and commitments of our members, partners, and allies even when we disagree. We agree that collaborating on shared goals does not mean we endorse positions members may take outside the UFA collaboration. We value the relationships that we are building through our work.

Communities Should Design their Own Solutions

Child welfare systems’ interventions regularly fail to match the identified needs of children, families and communities. Services are too often designed to meet the needs and resources of service providers, not of communities. This has led to a devastating number of families separated due to poverty-related circumstances when concrete, material support could have kept them together. We urge investment that invites communities to design their own solutions to the real priority needs of children and families.

Elevate Expertise of Those Directly Impacted

The child welfare system must hear, elevate, and amplify the voices of those with personal experience with its interventions. Parents and children who have experienced child welfare intervention understand its impact most powerfully. As advocates for families, some with lived experience and many not, we recognize the imperative to listen to and heed many voices of directly affected parents and children as we do this work.

Recognize Disparate Impact and Reduce Harm

We work to reduce the harm family separation causes, understanding that the child welfare system has imposed disproportionate, severe and enduring harms to poor, minority, and marginalized families, and especially in Black and Indigenous communities. We commit to using our resources to support the voices, experiences, and leadership of all families and communities harmed by the child welfare system.

 

UFA Governing Board

  • Andrew Brown

    Vice President of Policy

    Texas Public Policy Foundation

    Andrew C. Brown, JD, is Vice President of Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where he oversees legislative strategy and led a bipartisan coalition to pass reforms to Texas's child protection laws. He joined TPFF in 2018 as a Distinguished Fellow in Child and Family Policy. As an attorney, he has represented children in the child welfare system, advocated for the rights of parents, and helped build families through adoption.

    Andrew earned his BA magna cum laude in political science from Baylor University and his JD from Southern Methodist University. His work on international adoption law and child welfare issues has been published in leading legal journals and media outlets.

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  • Kathleen Creamer

    Managing Attorney

    Community Legal Services of Philadelphia

    Kathleen Creamer, JD, is Managing Attorney of the Family Advocacy Unit at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, where she leads a team that uses holistic family defense to help parents maintain custody of or reunite with their children. Kathleen joined CLS as a staff attorney in 2006, and was Director of Legal Services at Our Place, DC. She served as a law clerk to the Honorable J. Michael Ryan of the D.C. Superior Court Family Court.

    Kathleen led the coalition that developed and lobbied for the passage of PA’s Healthy Birth for Incarcerated Women Act, and served on PA’s Joint State Government Commission’s Legislative Advisory Committee on Children of Incarcerated Parents. Kathleen is a member of the Statewide Children’s Roundtable, the PA Child Welfare Council, and the American Bar Association’s National Alliance for Parent Representation. Kathleen graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and earned her JD from the University of North Carolina.

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  • Christine Gottlieb

    Assistant Professor of Clinical Law and Director

    Family Defense Clinic at the NYU School of Law

    Chris Gottlieb is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Law and Director of the Family Defense Clinic at the NYU School of Law, where she teaches law and social work students to protect the constitutional rights of families against unwarranted surveillance and separation. Chris’s scholarship focuses on parental rights, family regulation, and strategies to advance racial justice in the child welfare system. She is co-counsel in the landmark lawsuit Gould v. The City of New York, a class action challenging searches by child protective services that violate the Fourth Amendment.

    Chris clerked for Judge Fortunato P. Benavides of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She is a recipient of the Kathryn A. McDonald Award for Excellence in Family Court and NYU’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Faculty Award. Chris holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and a JD from NYU.

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  • Nora McCarthy

    Founder

    NYC Family Policy Project

    Nora McCarthy is the Founder and Director of the NYC Family Policy Project, which explores and builds evidence, through original research, data and policy analysis, for the policy visions of parents and young people impacted by the child welfare system in NYC. For 16 years, Nora was founder and director of Rise, a NYC advocacy organization led and staffed by parents impacted by the child welfare system.

    Nora edited the citywide youth newspaper New Youth Connections (NYC) and a magazine by teens in foster care, Represent; wrote the Upstream City column for The Imprint; and has written for Newsday, Slate, The Appeal and Child Welfare Watch. Nora is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and serves on the board of the International Parent Advocacy Network.

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  • David Meyers

    Solo Practitioner

    Sacramento, CA

    David M. Meyers is the Principal Shareholder in the Law Offices of David M. Meyers, where he serves as a national consultant, trainer and attorney advocate in California child welfare cases. David co-founded Dependency Legal Services, a non-profit that oversees the representation of parents and children in Sonoma, Marin, Stanislaus, Yolo, Placer, and Solano Counties. He served as a Senior Attorney with California’s Administrative Office of the Courts, Center for Families, Children and the Courts, where he developed statewide curriculum for attorneys in juvenile law practice, and represented the CA judiciary on state and national boards.

    David is a consultant with the American Bar Association’s National Resource Center for Juvenile and Legal Issues and a member of their National Alliance for Parent Representation. He holds a BA in journalism and music from the University of Florida and earned his JD from the University of Arizona.

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UFA Steering Committee

  • Michael Bowman, Former President, ALEC Action

  • Josh Gupta-Kagan, Clinical Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

  • Darice Good,  Owner and Attorney, Good Legal Firm

  • Will Estrada, Senior Counsel, Home School Legal Defense Association

  • Martin Guggenheim, Emeritus Professor, New York University School of Law

  • April Lee, Director of Client Voice, Community Legal Services of Philadelphia

  • Brandon Logan, Executive Director, One Accord for Kids

  • James Mason, Vice President of Litigation and Development, Home School Legal Defense Association

  • Anjana Samant, Senior Staff Attorney, Women’s Rights Project, ACLU

  • Johana Scot, Executive Director, Parent Guidance Center, Inc. 

  • Michael Ramey, President, Parental Rights Foundation

  • Richard Wexler, Executive Director, National Coalition for Child Protection Reform

  • Ruth Ann White, Executive Director, National Center for Housing and Child Welfare

  • Amelia Watson, Managing Attorney, Washington State Office of Public Defense