Mother’s Outreach Network National Convening
Baltimore, MD
Friday, November 6, 2026
Featuring research by the Access to Justice Lab at Harvard Law School Cosponsored by University of Baltimore School of Law, Sayra and Neil Meyerhoff Center for Families, Children and the Courts.
Built on lived expertise and local data
Mother’s Outreach Network advances economic security for families through social-justice education, grassroots mobilization, and legal advocacy, dismantling the systems that separate mothers from their children.
Lunch
George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, as our keynote speaker, the scholar who has defined the legal and constitutional critique of family policing, and author of Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families.
Lunch
Details about the speaker will be added soon.
Co-Facilitator
Co-Facilitator
Co-Facilitator
Registration is now open
Join researchers, funders, advocates, and mothers for a day of connecting, examining, and strategizing to transform family policing through policies for economic security, justice, and true family well-being.
LOCATION University of Baltimore School of Law
Location Address:
University of Baltimore School of Law,
1401 N Charles St
Baltimore, MD 21201
Hotel Accommodations:
As a valued conference attendee, we are pleased to offer a special discounted guest room rate of $185.00 per night for our Standard King and Standard Two Queen guest rooms. Rates are quoted per room, per night and are subject to applicable taxes (currently 17.5% plus a $5.00 historical hotel tax).
Hotel Indigo Baltimore Downtown
24 West Franklin Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
Reservations: 855-914-1370
Reservation Deadline: 10/19/2026
Other Recommended Hotels:
https://www.ubalt.edu/admission-and-aid/visit-and-connect/directions/local-accommodations.cfm
Support Our Work
Invest in Mothers. Invest in Family Freedom.
Mothers deserve the resources, stability, and power to keep their families together and thrive. Your support helps advance economic security, grassroots organizing, and legal advocacy while investing in mothers’ lived expertise and collective power.
This convening centers on the Mother Up pilot, the first known guaranteed income research pilot studying the impact of direct cash assistance on child welfare system involvement. The concept was first published in 2022, in the article “Building a Guaranteed Income to end the ‘Child Welfare’ System,” written by Mother’s Outreach Network Founding Executive Director Melody Webb for the Columbia Journal of Race and Law. The pilot’s independent research is conducted by the Access to Justice Lab at Harvard Law School, and examines how economic support can reduce reliance on removal and surveillance as default responses to poverty.
The day will include panels, working sessions, and direct engagement with the researchers, advocates, and funders shaping this work, including firsthand reflections from Mother Up pilot participants themselves.
The researchers’ conclusion, stated in their terms: if this prepilot were replicated in a full-scale study, guaranteed income could avoid, shorten, and lessen the footprint of child welfare system involvement in families’ lives.
Melody Webb also discussed the prevention argument on the Community In-Site podcast, titled “How Cash Assistance with No Strings Attached Can Prevent Foster Care.”
For questions about the convening, please contact us.
Continuing November 7th
We encourage attendees to remain in Baltimore through November 7 and join our Maryland colleagues and partners at CFCC for Cradle to Cage, Seeds of Hope, examining the impact of family policing on housing, incarceration, and family well-being.
