Part of Stolen Children’s Month

On 26 June, groups in the US held vigils nationwide against the forced removal of children from their families, especially in Black, Indigenous and immigrant communities. Support Not Separation (UK) held a Vigil outside Parliament in London, together with Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign, Women of Colour in the Global Women’s Strike and others. Breaking the mother/child bond by separating children from their mums, whether through the child welfare industry, imprisonment, deportation, violence and/or war is deeply harmful to children and must be stopped.

We demanded an end to the state kidnapping of children which:

• Targets single mums who are the poorest in every community, especially if we’re of colour and/or immigrant, disabled, young, fleeing domestic violence, have grown up in care…
• Takes thousands of children every year into “care” and/or forcibly has them adopted.
• Denies mothers the money and other support we are legally entitled to in order to keep our children and refuses to prioritise reunification as legally required.
• Blames mums escaping domestic violence and forces children to live with violent fathers, including convicted rapists.
• Imprisons mums for minor offences, mostly of poverty, and makes it impossible to get our kids back when we get out.
• Forces immigrant mums with no recourse to public funds into destitution and/or dependence on violent men and then deports us without our children.
• Maintains a “hostile environment” against asylum seekers and refugees, denying our right to family reunion with children we were forced to leave behind when we fled our home countries.
• Spends millions on privatised foster care and residential homes which neglect and abuse our children.
• Supports Israel’s reproductive genocide in Gaza which has already killed and injured over 50,000 children, including babies, their others and whole families, and is now starving the whole population.
• Pours money into military budgets, fuelling wars that kill and maim, while denying money for life and for the caring work which sustains every community.

More info: sns@legalactionforwomen.net   @NotSeparation