Auburndale High grad urges changes to child protection system in newly published book

Jessica Pryce stood on the small stage atop a red, circular carpet that gave the impression of an oversized pin cushion, with the familiar three letters “TED” posed behind her.

Speaking in a neutral tone, Pryce asked members of the audience to imagine being child protective services workers and arriving unannounced at a home, investigating a report of child abuse.

Pryce established the scene: three children lying on a mattress on the floor, an ashtray and empty beer cans visible on a table and a rat trap set in a corner, not far from the children. The refrigerator does not contain much food. Another mattress can be seen on the floor of a bedroom.

During her two years as an investigator for Florida’s Department of Children and Families, Pryce said, she often encountered similar scenes, and some far more troubling.

“Does that mother deserve to have her children taken from her?” Pryce asked the audience.

Pryce, a graduate of Auburndale High School, expands on that question and related concerns in her new book, “Broken: Transforming Child Protective Services — Notes of a Former Caseworker.”

In the 304-page book, published by Harper Collins, Pryce argues for a change in the approaches taken by government agencies charged with protecting children.

“Honestly, I think that the book is really calling for us to think differently about child welfare, which is what it has been known as, and really trying to broaden it to child and family well being,” Pryce said in a phone interview. “Because we believe — us advocates that are advocating for a different system — that the child is going to really be the recipient of a stronger family and a healthier parent. So we're not forgetting about the child, but we're trying to really see them as a family unit.”

Her path to the national stage

Pryce grew up in Lake Alfred, and most of her relatives still live in Polk County. After graduating with honors from Auburndale High in 2003, she earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology from Florida Southern College in Lakeland and then received a master’s in social work from Florida State University.

At that point, she took a position as a child protective investigator with DCF, the state agency responsible for assessing claims of child mistreatment and determining whether a child should be removed from parental care. Pryce spent two years in that job before heading to Washington, D.C., where she obtained a doctorate degree in social work from Howard University.

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She then spent two years in New York, concentrating on research as deputy director of the University at Albany's New York State Education Consortium. That was when she received an invitation to deliver a TED Talk, a videotaped presentation arranged by a nonprofit organization that uses the slogan, "Ideas worth spreading." Recorded in 2018 at a venue in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, Pryce’s address, titled, “To transform child welfare, take race out of the equation,” has been viewed more than 1.3 million times.

Pryce, recently inducted into the Auburndale High School Hall of Fame, now lives in Orlando and serves as a research professor at Florida State in its College of Social Work. She said that she regularly conducts training sessions for DCF and agencies in other states, and she has served as an expert witness in child welfare hearings.

“Broken” took six years from the start of research to publication, said Pryce, who is not herself a parent.

Books about the child welfare system often center on the most tragic outcomes, such as a mother of adopted children who drove her vehicle off a cliff in California in 2018, killing her family of eight. In her book, Pryce said, she wanted to direct attention to more typical situations that protective workers encounter during investigations.

“There’s instances in my book around domestic violence,” Pryce said. “That’s a huge issue in the communities. I talk about families that are living through poverty, that don't have housing, things that we're experiencing in our communities. And I wanted people to be able to read about what happens when DCF is at your house and you're about to be evicted. Should that family be separated?”

In her training, Pryce emphasizes an awareness of the power imbalance between employees from child protection agencies and the parents they are investigating.

“A lot of trainings that I do are focused on how to view power, because we have a lot of power in this system,” she said. “So I work with a lot of organizations, and I advise them to do some pretty intentional training and coaching around how to use your authority in child welfare, how to use your authority in DCF, but not to overpower families, not to abuse the power that you have.”

'Find what went right'

The book draws upon Pryce’s interviews with parents who have been subjects of investigations, in some cases having their children removed by a state agency. The author argues for a more comprehensive assessment of family situations.

“When you investigate, you have to find the facts, you have to find out, quote-unquote, what went wrong,” she said. “But we're also advocating for investigators to, in addition to that, find what went right. So let's look for the strength of the family. Let's look for the strength in the community. How do we leverage the community to try to keep the family together and safe instead of just being narrowly focused on, ‘OK, what happened?’ ”

She also addresses the difficulties of working as an investigator in agencies that are often understaffed and underfunded.

“I touch on the fact that a lot of child welfare professionals are experiencing something that we've come to know as moral injury, where they start to see that they came in to do a certain job, but they're not able to do that job,” she said. “And ultimately, they get burned out and they leave.”

Pryce’s book has gained praise and attracted national attention.

Michael Eric Dyson, a prominent author and academic figure, provided a recommendation: "In this groundbreaking work Jessica shows us how a system designed to protect Black children and families, often ends up harming them. Through powerful everyday stories she shows the fault lines within child protective services and grounds us in new ways to think about and fix this beleaguered system.'"

Kirkus Reviews described Pryce’s book as an “illuminating, necessary sociological report.”

Pryce has appeared on the nationally syndicated NPR programs “Here & Now” and “1A.” In the segment for “1A,” she was joined by Toia Potts, one of the parents interviewed for the book. Potts, a North Carolina resident, had her children removed from her custody after taking an infant to a hospital, a visit that resulted in an allegation of child abuse.

In the "1A" episode, Pryce said that Potts had seen at least four different case workers from a child welfare agency, an example of the problems that result from high turnover rates. The resulting delays caused Potts’ children to be in foster care for so long that the agency “wrote her off as a viable placement for her own kids,” Pryce said.

Potts has since become an advocate pushing for changes to the child protection system.

“It was a pleasure working with Dr. Pryce," Potts said by email. "I am so grateful that she captured my story for her book. I am dedicating my life to changing harmful systems so that what happened to my family doesn’t have to happen to another family. Having my story as part of Dr. Pryce’s book means so much as I continue to elevate this conversation.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Auburndale High grad urges changes to child protection system in book