About Us

THE PROBLEM

In high- and middle-income countries worldwide, allegations of child abuse or neglect trigger investigations by powerful systems of “child protection.”  Far too often, authorities remove children from their homes and place them in foster care without the benefit of due process.  This despite a lack of evidence that these investigations and removals make children safer and research showing that many children do far worse in foster care than at home.  One heartbreaking 2024 study from Sweden found that children taken into foster care were four times more likely to die before their 20th birthday—most often from suicide--then similarly maltreated children whom judges allowed to remain at home.  Families are destroyed and parents and children endure forced separation while state institutions rarely are held accountable for the lifelong trauma that they inflict.

In low-income countries that do not have formalized systems of investigations and child removals, parents who are poor, who struggle to care for children with disabilities or who face a temporary crisis are routinely coerced into placing their children in privately owned institutions.  In many countries, representatives from orphanages go from village to village “recruiting” poor children with promises of a better life and education.  Despite decades of research showing abysmal outcomes for institutionalized children, families continue to be broken up, in large part because the institutions have money and families lack support.

Parents most at risk of these forms of family breakup live in poverty and come from communities that have experienced marginalization and discrimination, including, in some contexts, systematic family destruction as the result of explicitly racist and genocidal policies. These include African-American and Native American/First Nation communities in North America, Aboriginal communities in Australia and New Zealand, the Roma in Europe, immigrants, refugees and other families that lack citizenship, families from ethnic minorities in multiethnic states, and families living in poverty everywhere. Parents who were placed in out-of-home care as children lose custody of their own children in overwhelmingly numbers.  Around the globe, children living with a disability and children of parents with a disability frequently experience forced or coerced institutionalization due to disabilities alone.

THE PARENT ADVOCACY SOLUTION

Over the past 30 years, parents separated from their children in these ways have come together to bring their own children home as well as to help others reunify their families. They have organized to fight for due process protection. They have worked to enact policies that support families, so that fewer children are forced to endure the trauma of unwarranted separations. They have also advocated for parents’ ability to continue to play a central role in their children’s lives, even when they may be unable to manage the responsibilities of serving as the primary caretaker.

WHY BOTH PARENT ADVOCATES AND ALLIES?

In building this movement, parents have forged alliances with academics, lawyers, social workers, activists, journalists, Child Welfare administrators, politicians, and others.

Why do we at IPAN believe that parents need allies?

History offers many fantastic examples of grassroots movements where vulnerable and oppressed people, patients, ethnic and racial minorities and the like have mobilized without any support from professionals. They have cast off the yoke of those who “know better.”

But the situation of parents who have their children taken away from them is more complicated. When these parents pursue justice, it is always a third person—namely the child—who must be allowed to stand at the center. The reality is that sometimes those of us who are struggling with poverty, addiction, mental illness, domestic violence, as well as personal, intergenerational and societal trauma do need help from society.

We organize because we see that authorities all over the world not only fail to support parents; they consistently fail to support our children! We who are poor and vulnerable are dismissed as bad parents, but often we are the ones who know our children best, who truly love them, and understand what our families need in order for our children to thrive.

We at IPAN don’t believe that parents will ever be able to create just systems that truly promote child welfare without joining forces with allied professionals, just as those professionals can never hope to build a society that protects children without forging close relationships with parents.

THE VALUE OF WORKING ACROSS BORDERS

The work of parent advocacy is hard, slow and often lonely. IPAN was formed to energize people fighting in their own corners of the world with the knowledge that their struggles are shared around the world.

Our goal is to make it possible for parents and allies to learn from each other’s challenges and successes, sharing strategies from different cultures, legal systems and socio-economic conditions that will inspire action and increase the pace of change.

Working across national borders also allows us to connect specific groups, including parents impacted by discrimination due to race, ethnicity and disability; parents falsely accused of abuse due to medical misdiagnoses; fathers, who face their own, unique vulnerabilities within Child Welfare systems; women exposed to domestic violence; grandparents and others.

We also created IPAN to find a way for parents’ voices to be heard not only within the countries where we live, but also within international bodies, where parents’ perspectives have been almost completely absent. In 2021, IPAN submitted a paper to the United Nations' Day of General Discussion on the Rights of the Child that contributed to a first-ever decision by the Committee on the Rights of the Child to call on states to develop mechanisms to ensure that parents are able to “consistently and meaningfully engage with decision-makers and have their views taken into account in care-related decisions and processes related to policymaking” and to recommend that parents provide and receive peer support to help reduce reliance on out-of-home care.

At IPAN, we come together to explore urgent questions of how to remedy injustice, keep families from being torn apart, and shield children from suffering. Since you have landed on our page, we hope you are looking for answers to similar questions. We believe that the very fact that we’re asking the questions together will lead us to solutions!

Welcome aboard!

WHAT WE DO

IPAN’s goal is simple: to share knowledge.

On this website we will periodically post stories, articles, essays and resources that will teach you about efforts around the world to push back against systems that fail to protect families from unnecessary separations, change the narrative about poor families, and institute policies that support families and reduce child suffering.

Starting in 2026, we will also host discussion groups on topics of shared interest. We hope you will stay tuned and join us then.

WHAT WE DON’T DO

We are an organization that supports advocates, activists and allies. Although we are deeply aware of how desperately individual families facing separation need support, IPAN does not provide that level of support.