Alan Dettlaff spoke to NPF fellows in McAllen, Texas January 24, 2023 on “Dismantling Child Welfare: The Way Forward?”

Alan Dettlaff is a professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, where he also served as Dean through 2022. Alan began his career as a social worker in the family policing system, where he worked as a caseworker and administrator. Today his work focuses on ending the harm that results from this system. In 2020, he helped to create and launch the upEND movement, a collaborative effort dedicated to abolishing the family policing system and building alternatives that focus on healing and liberation.

Dettlaff received his bachelor’s degree in social work from TCU and master’s and PhD in social work from the University of Texas at Arlington. He is the author of the forthcoming book, “Racist Intents: American Child Welfare in the Afterlife of Slavery and the Case for Abolition” to be published by Oxford University Press in 2023. He is also co-founding editor of “Abolitionist Perspectives in Social Work,” a peer-reviewed scholarly journal dedicated to developing and disseminating an abolitionist praxis in social work.