BJP NYC 10: How the Child Welfare System Undermines Pregnant People and Families with Erin Miles Cloud

09/09/20 • 96 min

Season 1 Episode 10 features an interview with Erin Miles Cloud: a lawyer and a mother, as well as the Co-Director and Co-Founder of Movement for Family Power. In this week’s episode we do a deep dive into the womb to foster care pipeline and the ways in which hospitals and social workers are complicit in criminalizing poor parents and people who use drugs. We get into the relationship between the police department and child welfare services, and how the child welfare system incentivizes the separation of families.
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Erin Miles Cloud’s Bio:
Erin Miles Cloud is the co-director/co-founder of Movement for Family Power, and a former family defense public defender. She is Baltimore born, and Bronx living. She is Black mother of two beautiful children.

References During the Episode:

Movement for Family Power’s Ground Zero Report
Follow Movement for Family Power on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
BBC documentary “Guinea Pig Kids: ARV Babies in New York City”

Questions to Consider After the Episode:

How can we better support pregnant people and parents who are poor? Who use drugs and substances?
When we consider abolition of police, we need to also consider all of the ways that police are embedded in social welfare programs. And how social welfare programs mimic the values and behaviors of police.

Created and Hosted by Taja Lindley
Produced by Colored Girls Hustle
Music, Soundscape and Audio Engineering by Emma Alabaster
Support our work on Patreon or make a one-time payment via PayPal
For more information visit BirthJustice.nyc
This podcast is made possible, in part, by the Narrative Power Stipend - a grant funded by Forward Together for members of Echoing Ida.

Support the show

References During the Episode:

Movement for Family Power’s Ground Zero Report
Follow Movement for Family Power on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
BBC documentary “Guinea Pig Kids: ARV Babies in New York City”

Questions to Consider After the Episode:

How can we better support pregnant people and parents who are poor? Who use drugs and substances?
When we consider abolition of police, we need to also consider all of the ways that police are embedded in social welfare programs. And how social welfare programs mimic the values and behaviors of police.

Support the show

Previous Episode

BJP NYC 09: A Sisterly Approach to Doula Care in NYC with Nicole Jean Baptiste

Season 1 Episode 9 features an interview with Nicole Jean Baptiste: a mother of two, a full spectrum community based doula, lactation counselor, yoga instructor, and oral historian. In this week’s episode we discuss Nicole’s journey into birthwork (which includes a bit about her own birth story) as well as the birth injustice she has witnessed in New York City as a doula and as an advocate. We also dive into doula work: from the importance of compensating doulas to valuing doulas as autonomous birthworkers. Nicole offers some sound suggestions and advice for what our City can do to better serve pregnant and parenting people, and folks of reproductive age.

Nicole Jean Baptiste’s Bio:
Of Southern American and Caribbean ancestry and based in the Bronx, New York, Nicole Jean Baptiste strives to center the borough and the Black experience in the birth and social justice activism in which she engages. Nicole is currently a Community Doula Consultant for the New York City Health Department’s COVID-19 Perinatal Taskforce. She is the founder of Sésé Doula Services and co-founder of the Bx (Re)Birth and Progress Collective.

References During the Episode:

Donate to Bx (Re)Birth and Progress Collective via PayPal and through their registry on Target
Follow Nicole and Bx (Re)Birth and Progress on Instagram
Birth Centers in NYC: Brooklyn Birthing Center, Jazz Birthing Center (sister center of the Brooklyn Birthing Center), and the Birthing Center of New York
To learn more about Amber Rose Isaac and her death, you can read this article in The Guardian

Questions to Consider After the Episode:

How can our City make doulas more accessible to people who want them and need them?
How can healthcare institutions and healthcare providers follow the lead of their patients and clients?

Support the show

Next Episode

BJP NYC 11: Pregnancy and Substance Use in NYC: An Introduction to Harm Reduction

Season 1 Episode 11 features an interview with Nathalia Gibbs and Dana Kurzer-Yashin from the National Harm Reduction Coalition. In this week’s episode we dive into a harm reduction 101 crash course where we get into the definition, history and current landscape of harm reduction policies and practices. We then apply this information to better understand how pregnant people who use drugs are navigating prenatal care, childbirth, and the child welfare system; and how New York City and State can better support people who use drugs. This episode is a follow up to Season 1 Episode 10 where we discussed how the war on drugs fuels the child welfare system’s presence in the lives of pregnant and parenting New Yorkers.
About this week’s guests:
Nathalia Gibbs (They/She) is a queer black doula, organizer and passionate believer in harm reduction serving as LGBTQ and Harm Reduction Coordinator where she is currently working on building the Lighthouse Learning Collective.
Dana Kurzer-Yashin (she/her) is the Overdose and Harm Reduction Trainer developing and administering trainings on harm reduction, safer drug use, trauma informed care and de-escalation and more.
National Harm Reduction Coalition is a national advocacy and capacity-building organization that promotes the wellbeing and dignity of people and communities affected by drug use. Their efforts advance harm reduction policies, practices, and programs that address the adverse effects of drug use including overdose, HIV, hepatitis C, addiction, and incarceration. Recognizing that social inequality and injustice magnify drug related harm and limit the voice of our most vulnerable communities, they work to uphold every individual’s right to health and their competence to participate in the public policy dialogue.
References During the Episode: