Unabridged Conversation with Dr. Jessica Pryce

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Hello, it's Andrea Dunlop, host and creator of Nobody Should Believe Me.

We are working hard on our next season that will be coming to your ears in June.

And in the meantime, we are going to have some exciting new stuff in the feed.

So do stay tuned.

But today, I wanted to share our unabridged interview from last season with Dr.

Jessica Price, because her new book, which is called Broken, Transforming Child Protective Services, Notes of a Former Caseworker, goes on sale today, March 19th.

I read this book in preparation for my interview with Dr.

Price, and I honestly could not put it down.

It is so compelling and so heartbreaking and just gave me such a good perspective on the issues that it covers.

I still think about this book all the time.

I talk about it all the time.

And honestly, if you love my show, you will be into this book.

So we will include a link in our show notes for where you can buy the book.

And in the meantime, enjoy the episode.

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I have a job because of you.

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The Mother Next Door, which I co-authored with Detective Mike Weber, is available in all formats wherever books are sold.

It's a deep dive into three of Mike's most impactful Munchausen by proxy cases, and I think you'll love it.

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Hi, Dr.

Price.

How are you?

I'm good.

How are you?

I'm good, too.

Thank you so much for being with us.

I just finished reading your book this morning and I

really

read it in two sittings.

It's really well done.

And I just wrote my first nonfiction book and it's so much more of a challenge to like keep things moving.

You did a really great job.

I felt like I was like turning pages.

I was like wanting to know what happened to everybody.

I appreciate the feedback for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Really well done.

And also I know your editor, Gabby Page Fort.

I always read the acknowledgements because I always want to know who everyone's team is.

So yeah, she's great.

Oh, she's, she's awesome.

Well, to start with, if you wouldn't mind just introducing yourself.

Hi, my name is Dr.

Jessica Price, and I am a faculty member at Florida State University and started my career in child protection as an investigator.

And now I do a lot of work around the country around training and leadership development and really how do we shift our mindsets and do this work differently.

And you have a new book coming out.

It's called Broken.

Can you tell us a little bit about your book?

Sure, sure.

So I started working on Broken in 2018, and I really set out to amplify the voices of Black women who were going through the system and working hard to pull their families back together.

And it has become over time,

also a professional memoir where I certainly amplify Black women's voices, but I also add in my experience from the front line when I did child abuse investigations.

So I'm hopeful that people get an understanding of what CPS work looks like and also just the complexities.

here and there for everyone involved.

As I mentioned, I just finished reading your book this morning and I noticed in the author's note that you mentioned originally you were thinking that it might be sort of more of a bird's eye view of things and then you ended up making it more personal, which I think happens to a lot of us when we're writing about things that are personal.

So can you tell us about that process and how you ended up putting yourself in the story?

Sure.

So I wrote an iteration of the book.

I know you're an author too.

So imagine writing two books.

So I wrote the book and I submitted it and the publisher liked it.

They thought it was a decent draft.

But they said, you know, I really would encourage you to dig a little deeper and really talk about your own development through this process and who were you on day one of this work and where are you today?

So that's when I decided to really figure out, now, how do I write a narrative nonfiction book, right?

How do I narrate my experience in a way that isn't going to have someone put down the book, isn't going to have them not want to finish the book.

So I actually took a course online around narrative, creative writing, narrative nonfiction, and it was an amazing course and just taught me how to put myself, to your point, in the story and also how to keep the story moving and having folks realize how fast-paced this job can really be and how you just don't know what is going to happen.

Even if you have an idea, it's so complex.

You just don't know what might happen with the case.

Yeah.

And I thought that served the book so well to really humanize both the investigators, you know, your coworkers, your supervisor, and also the women that you were interacting with.

So I really loved that.

You know, I think a lot of people start off working in CPS with really good intentions, like you did, that they want to save kids and they want to help kids.

And it sounds like in your experience, the job did not really live up to that description.

So can you tell us about that?

I came into the system because it was an opportunity.

It sounded like...

a really

noble thing to do where I would come in and keep kids safe.

And I realized soon after that, that it was very much a level of intrusion that I didn't expect.

I don't know why I didn't expect that, but it really, I was 23 and it was a brand new internship and a brand new job.

So many of the situations are very awkward, very intrusive.

And you are meeting families on their, sometimes their worst day and asking them questions that they probably couldn't answer on their best day.

right and you're requiring them to really have a lot of objectification of all of their decisions all of their behaviors.

And, you know, you come in to save kids, but you realize you do a lot of policing in many ways.

Yeah.

And you kind of talked about how that job ends up being pretty at odds with helping kids a lot of the time.

It is.

It sort of creates this rift between you and parents.

So instead of helping kids, you're really ostracizing, punishing, you know, you're focused on the parent.

And we often miss like, what's best for this child in this moment?

So I did not anticipate how much my job would be looking at parents, dissecting their behaviors and trying to find a guilty person rather than, okay, this is a family.

And what can we do to figure out how to keep them together in some capacity?

And that is the difference between coming into the field to help kids, but really ending up putting all your effort into finding out who did it and then finding a punishment.

Yeah.

And I mean, I think that really comes through so much.

You know, I could really visualize kind of you going through the cupboards and looking for what foods there.

And I mean, that just, you read it and you just think like, this would be so humiliating to be a parent in this situation.

And I think a lot of people have the idea that what CPS mostly does is investigate abuse.

Was that your experience?

You know, I'm also a social scientist and a researcher, and I look at the data.

And I think to your point, most people don't realize that I believe the latest data has it at 76%

of kids are in the system because of neglect.

Their parents are suffering through perhaps poverty, perhaps some mental health issues that are drawing them away from their kids, and the kids aren't having their needs met.

So I would say the overwhelming majority of the time, we're not exactly investigating willful abuse.

We're investigating some complex

Sometimes disturbing situations, but I think that we have to come in not exactly looking for a guilty person, but trying to find out what holes can we plug and how can we strengthen this person to do things better.

And we should say too that you have this on-the-ground experience and then you have this big zoom out that you've done with your career.

So did you find that the things you learned from that more academic perspective like really reinforced what you saw?

Did you sort of feel things clicking into place when you were seeing some of that data?

I did.

And I talk about in the book this interesting experience I had with understanding the harm that I had done much later, right?

After I left the field.

So I think that sometimes when you're working with families and you're so close to them and you're in their homes every day, you would assume that that proximity would create awareness, but it really was the opposite for me.

So once I left the field and I started looking at the data, doing research and working on my doctorate, I started to see just how much harm is being done to vulnerable families, many of them racially marginalized.

So some people feel like proximity creates awareness, but sometimes you do have to zoom out and say, look at what we're doing to families and look at what I contributed when I was in the field.

Yeah, and that really comes through, I think, when you're talking about the various investigators' caseloads and just the work that they have to do.

And that sort of even if they maybe have the best intentions.

I think a lot of people that come into the field are just coming right out of college or are pretty young.

And they get so caught up in sort of trying to keep up with the job that it sounds like it can really lead to that sort of dehumanization of the people they're working with and that sort of distance because they might become more of a box to check off than a person who's going to really experience consequences from this interaction.

Absolutely.

And I really wanted to bring that point across.

You know, I always tell people there are a lot of schools of thought around child's welfare reform and transformation.

And I've always been the person who wants to believe these folks are coming in with well-intentions and want to help them develop into a person that has a different mindset toward what they're seeing and a different set of expectations of the folks that they're seeing and also a way to be aware about our own value sets and that automatic machine inside all of us that impact our decisions.

I just want folks to be really keenly aware of that in the field.

But I come at it from a workforce lens.

I do.

And I realize that that's not always the popular approach, but I just want them as in the workforce to feel that we see them.

We know the work isn't easy, but we also want to hold them accountable for doing things in a different way.

You know, one of the things that you talked about in the book that really resonated with me was this sort of tendency to see parents who are caught up within the child protective system as bad parents.

And, oh, they did something wrong, like this assumption that, like, if CPS is investigating you already, that's a mark against you in some way.

And the stories that you told, some of them were so relatable, like the story with the dad, who the TV fell on his son.

And I just thought, like, my husband's never fallen asleep while my kids were watching TV.

Like, you could just sort of see that happening and it was so heartbreaking.

And then, you know, some of the like assumptions that were made about him right away.

And then, you know, equally with your friend Erica, where it's like, maybe that's not something you think you would do, but you sort of look at the pressure that she was under.

And I mean, I have little kids.

I have a five-year-old and a 16-month-old.

And you're just like, yeah, you watch the sort of stresses piling on her as the book goes to that point.

And I think that maybe a lot of people don't think it could ever be them, but really it's kind of a but for the grace of God moment that that could be you.

Agreed, agreed.

And when you are in my position at that time, and then these things start to happen around you with people that you care about, it definitely taints, changes, shifts how you do the work.

And then there's that moral conflict of these are my colleagues.

These are my, you know, colleagues and friends and family.

And just trying to figure out, realizing everyone's doing the best they can, but something's just amiss, right?

Something is amiss.

You are, you know, really zooming out to that systemic level.

And that's a lot about what you talk about.

And it's too easy sometimes to put people in like, oh, this is the villain of the story.

This is the hero of the story.

Like it's almost never that clean cut.

So yeah, I really appreciated kind of all that nuance.

And I think it was great that you put yourself in the story that way because, you know, throughout the course of this book, you're working as an investigator for part of the book, but then it also like CPS intrudes on your life and your family's life and your friends life in these other ways.

And you sort of see how that plays out.

And one of the things that really struck me with Erica's story, and I wanted to talk about this because last season we covered a story that was a story of an abuse victim that ended up getting adopted by, it was a kinship placement, it was family members, but I was very aware of like this is such a rare scenario where things work out so beautifully.

And I sort of was very aware of, like, I want to sort of address some of these bigger issues with sort of the adoption stuff.

And so, can you talk a little bit about how CPS sometimes treats parents that have been put in that box of being a neglectful parent or like not a good parent for sort of lack of better terminology?

And then how they see potential adoptive parents.

So this is such a tough conversation to have because I don't want anyone to assume I'm anti-adoption, right?

I think that sometimes when I've done trainings and I go to conferences and I talk about this, some people hear what they want to hear.

So some people hear, you don't care about adoption.

And they say, but adoption is beautiful.

And I say, I agree.

It is a very beautiful thing.

But we have to realize that not every child needs to be adopted.

And all of the cases that I've had to sit on as an expert witness, the cases that I've consulted on, to your earlier question, the system seems to decide that this adoptive person, this adoptive mom, adoptive dad, can create just a better experience for this child.

And the bond that they have built, it overrides.

the bond that this child has with their biological family often.

And it's very disturbing to me about that bonding part because I tell the child welfare system all the time, it's sad to me that we don't believe that we can help reestablish bonds.

Like we can reunify families and then use our expertise to work with them over time to really help them cultivate that connection that they have innately.

But somehow the child welfare system has decided, nope, they built this bond with their foster parents and there's nothing we can do about it.

And I just think we can do better in that realm.

So it is a tough situation because adoption can be such a miraculous and amazing thing.

But I think it can also really be the most devastating thing to families that are fighting for their kids.

I recently read We Were Once a Family.

Have you read that book?

It was about that.

Yeah.

So I thought that book was amazing.

That was obviously an adoption where there was a family member.

It was so interesting to learn sort of all of the things that you just sort of see like just things going wrong at every turn.

And that book, and then there's a couple of stories in your book that have to deal with medical neglect.

And this is such an interesting question, I think, for our listeners in particular, because we talk about medical child abuse cases on this show.

And we've often talked about how the fact that there is no designation specific to medical child abuse, except in, I think, two states, means that it gets shoehorned into medical neglect, which is problematic for a whole bunch of reasons.

But I really thought in reading some of these stories where you think some of these situations of, quote, medical neglect are really stories about access and or stories about misperception and misunderstanding.

Can you tell us a little bit about that designation and how people kind of end up in that bucket of medical neglect?

In my experience, a lot of families, when they go in to get help, when they go into the ER, when they are talking to physicians, a pattern that I have picked up on is these parents are asking questions, perhaps pushing back a little.

not wanting to accept everything that the doctors say.

Some parents want to understand all of the nuances and details about treatment plans and what exactly are you doing to my baby.

And I think that a couple of the stories I mentioned, they started to create this mistrust with the hospital staff when they started to push back and ask questions.

And I think that level of mistrust often leads to CPS being called and I think you use the word assumptions, assuming, okay, this parent is neglecting our medical advice.

This parent is not doing what we think needs to be done right now.

And that happened in at least two of the cases.

And I certainly would never say I have all the answers because medical professionals, I believe, are also trying their best.

But I also think that there needs to be some sort of checks and balances as it relates to what doctors say is abuse, what they don't say is abuse.

I was at a conference a couple of years ago giving a keynote and it was a room full of physicians.

And they brought me there because they said, we want to hear about racial disparity, implicit bias.

Some of the science is saying that, you know, black families come in and they get this designation designation of medical abuse or medical neglect and other families don't.

So I do think that physicians are trying to learn more about it and do better, but I think that there still needs to be some sort of checks and balances.

Yeah.

And Dr.

Bryce, I have to tell you, you know, obviously we all come to what we do through our own lens.

And I will tell you that I feel like I tend to get a little defensive of doctors because in a lot of our cases, we see sort of this opposite situation, right?

Where the doctors are not listened to by the courts and their advice is sort of ignored when it shouldn't be and the kids end up paying the cost.

And then so I look at these other situations, but I think I would be also totally naive to think that there isn't bias against black mothers because that is obviously a well-documented phenomenon.

We know that black mothers have like worse health outcomes, I think, by sort of all objective measures.

And I'm a tennis fan, so obviously I follow Serena Williams journey and that is so upsetting.

And you think like, this is one of the wealthiest, most well-known athletes in history.

And she's having this terrible experience where people aren't really listening to her.

And it's so upsetting.

We have a lot of medical professionals that listen to the show.

So, I mean, what do you want them to keep in mind about that racial bias?

You know, you have a great example of this in your book where you are talking to these two white CPS attorneys and they're like, well, no one was racist against her.

So we don't need you to come in with your expertise.

And it's like, no, like, that's not the point.

There are these like structural things, I mean, especially about medicine, right?

I mean, against women, against black women and specifically.

And so like, what from your perspective should medical professionals and specifically those who are working directly with child protection teams, like, what do you want them to keep in mind as they are evaluating these cases?

So I would offer that a lot of child welfare agencies are beginning to do group decision making.

You know, when I was in the field, I would often make a decision.

I would call one person.

and we would make a decision about removals or make a decision about what we see with a family.

And a lot of child welfare agencies are saying, if it's not an emergency situation, so to speak, let's get into a room and talk about what we see and talk about it from three different lenses, right?

What are the strengths of the family?

What's the relevant history?

And what supportive things can we do to keep them together, right?

They come into the room with the frame of reference that this family is staying together unless they can't, right?

They don't come in with the frame of reference of, okay, this child's in danger.

What can we do to protect them?

They come in saying, this is a family, and we're going to do everything we can to keep them together unless we can't.

Like it's always, that is the way we look at it in this group decision-making model.

So I would offer that up.

And maybe your physicians that are listening are saying, we already do that and that's great.

But I think it's important to get into a room with people.

Hopefully the room is diverse and you're talking about what your concerns are.

And I think having awareness in that conversation and a level of cultural humility is going to take you a long way.

There are facts.

There's data.

There's objective things that you're seeing in that room.

but there's also a zoom out moment of saying, okay, we see what we see.

We have to report it.

And often you do.

I understand mandated reporting.

I'm a mandated reporter.

So I would say, if you have to report something, that's fine.

But I would also encourage you to advocate for that family.

And what I mean by that is, and you might recall this in the book, one of the moms had her child taken out of her custody and she stayed with that baby in the ER.

for the entire time.

She never left the hospital.

Now, there was someone watching her, which she didn't really appreciate, but she stayed there.

To me, that's a small way of saying, we're concerned.

We don't even know if you did this or not, but we don't want to separate you from your child, therefore harming the child and also damaging you.

So there are small things I think we can do to try to assuage some of the trauma that is inevitable when a child comes in with disturbing injuries.

Yeah.

So Am I pronouncing her name right?

Because I've only read it.

Is it Jatoya?

It is.

Her story, I feel like that I had to kind of scrape myself off the floor after that one and that was such a horrifying story yeah other than just how in the world did that happen yeah we're still trying to figure that out yeah i mean that story was so beyond heartbreaking there's a few things that i think are really interesting about that story number one kind of the crossover with intimate partner violence which is something that you talk about and I wonder also if you think, and this might seem like an obvious question, but you know, do some moms get the benefit of the doubt that other moms don't absolutely and i see that so much and that's why you probably also saw that i talk about this framework of development because there are certain mindsets that really discount any credibility when it comes to moms in the system and when i talk about this case in particular i explained to people that the folks that wrote Jatoya off, they have a very specific mindset about whether it's black moms, poor moms, moms that are involved with men they don't like.

Like they have some sort of bias toward this person.

And when they've already put those lenses up toward that person, the person doesn't have a leg to stand on and they lose credibility and they don't get any sort of benefit of the doubt.

That was a story that was so hard to read how anyone could think that was the best thing for those children.

That's one I think is going to really stick with readers, to say the least.

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And so, boy, I think, Dr.

Price, we chose like the most third rail things to focus our careers on.

um, but you know, I hear sometimes people have, you know, a little defensiveness about race, to say the least, when someone brings race into the conversation.

You know, something I've heard before is like, oh, it's not race, it's socioeconomic status.

But as I was reading this book, and I mean, surely both of those things play in, as I was reading your book, I was thinking about the mom that we covered last season.

So, Brittany Phillips, and she's white and she was low-income.

She was reported so many times before anybody did anything.

And I found myself questioning, like, if this was a black mom in that same situation, would that have played out differently?

And so I wonder if you can sort of tell us how you see those things playing into the child protective, because I think obviously income level is huge.

And I think reading through this, I was like, well, yeah, because these are people who they're getting this really onerous bail and they can't afford to hire some top shelf defense attorney to go and defend their rights in court.

You have a totally different situation and a totally different outcome than otherwise.

But obviously race has a specific resonance.

And I think that comes through with Erica's story really well.

So I would say that what really brought this home for me was, I think it was 2017, I read this article.

The title was, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you better be a perfect parent.

And it was a New York Times article that people can look up even today.

And it talks about just the reality of if you live in a poor community, if you are of low socioeconomic status, your parenting decisions are under a microscope.

And what happens in your neighborhood, it could be the same exact thing that happens in another neighborhood, but the intervention, the response is going to be different.

I hosted an event four or five years ago and invited the author of that article to keynote my conference.

So I looked at the article, loved it, reached out to her, And she is a white woman and she talked about this in her keynote.

She said, one of the black women that she worked with, she took a bath one afternoon and her daughter was down for a nap.

And then her daughter woke up and wandered outside and went down the street.

And the next person that came to her house was a CPS worker.

And the keynote speaker said, I'm here to tell you that if that happened in my neighborhood, it would be discussed over mimosas.

It would be laughed about.

They would have brought the child home.

We would be laughing about it saying, oh, you went to sleep and left your baby out here, but DCF wouldn't have made it in that neighborhood.

So I want to tell folks that say that race isn't an issue, that it's all poverty.

I would just say it is hard to extricate those things.

Like they are so enmeshed.

And I think that they're both an issue, but we can't discount race in this scenario.

Right, because I think there are, you know, those stories in your book, too, where you have, and I don't know what Erica's socioeconomic status was, but obviously she was a college graduate and all of that.

And she's still treated with suspicion rather than sympathy.

That really struck me because there were so many of the stories I read, like the story about the mom with the autistic daughter who leaves.

And I thought, oh, yeah, same.

If that happened to one of my friends, there would be like a picture on the front page with like a smiling police officer bringing that child home and like, you know, hearts and everyone's a hero.

And it's like, it just, it just, there's so much context around it that, yeah, I thought those stories, you know, they're so personal that they really hit home for me.

You know, one of the big things that I wanted to to get your advice on is we frequently tell people to report if they suspect abuse, right?

Because a lot of times the form of abuse that we're talking about is less well known.

It's something where a lot of people, when they are eventually interviewed by the police or someone like that, they sort of tell this story about feeling like something was off for a really long time.

And just once they had a name for it, sort of recognizing it.

And so, you know, we do want to encourage people to report if they have a really strong credible suspicion that abuse is happening because of course in medical child abuse there's a high fatality rate it's obviously extremely serious but i also feel a little bit two ways about giving that advice because i also recognize that just as we're talking about that advice doesn't apply equally to everyone right like if i'm calling cps on a mom that's in my exact same situation then fine okay like i don't worry that like she's going to get unnecessarily dragged into the system.

But if it was like a low-income person of color that I'm calling CPS on, then you could be making that report in good faith and then completely derailing that person's life, even if they haven't done anything wrong.

So I know this is a heck of a question to try and answer, but I mean, what should we tell people to do?

And again, recognizing that like a lot of these cases are not, I mean, I think you said 76%, right?

Which that's kind of stunning that only 24%.

You know, we always hear about CPS caseloads, right?

And so you think like, okay, well, if we could find a different way to handle those 76%,

they would be able to effectively handle abuse cases, which they don't.

I mean, it's sort of like, it doesn't work for either, right?

It's catching people up that don't need to be there.

And it's also letting people go that do need an intervention that are dangerous to their children.

So it's ineffective on both counts.

What do you think people should do if they have a really strong suspicion that abuse is happening?

Yeah, so I appreciate the question.

And I also appreciate the difficulty of the question.

And I agree with you that, quite like law enforcement, I feel like law enforcement is asked to do so many things, right?

Law enforcement, they have so many things in their wheelhouse, some things they probably shouldn't have in their wheelhouse, just like CPS has all of these things.

There's a housing crisis in this country, and CPS has very little they can do about that, right?

So we realize that there's so many things that impact the CPS system that is out of their locus of control.

So I would say, as mandated reporters, and I offer this up in the book, and I was very particular about how I worded this because I don't want anyone to say that I've told them not to report, because then that's a felony.

You know, if you're a mandated reporter, you have to report.

So, but I did say considerations before you make a report.

And I gave six or seven things to think through.

And one of those things is: do you know this family?

Are you aware of anything that's happened in the last six months that might be contributing to this issue?

Might you consider having a conversation with someone you trust, a community advocate about this family?

You can keep it anonymous.

If you don't want to mention their names, just say, I know a family and talk about potential resources if you can help.

I also made a statement in the book and said, fill in the blank.

If this family had X, my concern will be resolved, right?

If you can put something in that blank, then you might have an idea of who to talk to and where to go.

And I offered that up because when you look at the data, you see that educators call, law enforcement calls, and physicians and social workers at hospitals.

And I think that we can't stop the mandate.

It's federal.

You have to call it in.

But if you can take a moment to consider what might happen and what are some things we can offer, we're doing a big push to make ourselves known as mandated supporters rather than mandated reporters.

So we do want to have this supportive lens before we make the call.

I also want to share that there is a pilot going on in some areas of California around a family support plan where we're asking mandated reporters to fill out a one-page piece of paper before they report a family.

And on that piece of paper, it asks questions like, have you talked to the parents?

Where some people laugh when I say that because they're thinking, wait, people report people they don't talk to?

Well, of course, they might not know them.

But if you are a teacher, we want you to stop and say, well, let me try to talk to mom.

Let me try to talk to dad before I, you know, call DCF.

And there's a slew of other questions.

And some people at the end of that form they still report the family.

So it doesn't mean you don't report the family but now you have at least thought, you've considered and you can also offer more information to that hotline operator.

So again, no easy answers, but I am asking people to take a moment to consider why you're doing it, what resources can be offered, and make sure you're aware of what might happen to that family as a result of your call.

Yeah, that's great advice, taking that time to be thoughtful about it.

One of the stories that you tell in the book is, I believe, the very first case or one of the first cases that you worked on when you were an intern.

Can you tell us about that, mom, and how that was sort of your first introduction to this work?

Absolutely.

It was the first time I was on a case.

I was an intern, so I couldn't really do much except assist.

And it was an environmental hazard case.

And if you know anything about that, it means that...

the home is not safe for the kids that live there.

So when we went to the home, I remember walking through the home and honestly feeling appalled at what I saw.

Like I was angry, I was shocked, and I felt, oh, these kids shouldn't be here.

Like I immediately had these thoughts and I don't have a lot of authority.

So I couldn't make those calls, but I definitely remember feeling like this is not okay.

And that's why I tell people all the time as caseworkers, we're human.

So I always talk about bias, but we are human beings and we can feel things when we see things that, you know, don't feel right.

And we feel like kids shouldn't have to deal with that.

But I believe what I missed and also what my colleague missed that day was the mom and her experience and what she was dealing with.

And also we missed just the reality that this is their mom and this is their home.

And, you know, at the end of that case, we made a decision to take those kids out of the home.

But as you read, it created so many other problems for those kids and for this mom.

And I don't want to be reductionistic and say, all we had to do was clean up because it's not that simple.

But I do think that we could have went about that case in a different manner to try to keep that family together.

Maybe people assume that they would never be that mom, but I think being a mom, I'm sort of constantly aware of like this various ways that I have support.

You know, I have family nearby.

We have resources to be able to pay for daycare and that kind of thing.

And like, if all of those things were taken away, like, what kind of mom would you be?

And it's so visceral because I'm so aware that like we don't have any systemic protections at all for moms.

The minute you become a mom, you're like, oh, you know, I work for myself, so I didn't get any paying maternity leave.

It's like, oh, we have nothing.

It's like just on the government level, like no support for moms, nothing subsidized.

You know, it's so different than other countries.

Right.

And so you just, with that mom, I think it was so heartbreaking because you just think like,

if she's clearly having a mental health crisis.

And like, I think if you were looking at it, yeah, through that different lens, you would see, like, oh, well, anyone who's living like this needs help, right?

Not she's just wants to live that way.

Like, you know, it's sort of bizarre to sort of even think of that.

That, you know, I think we have these situations in our life that are so formative.

And then you sort of like have these layers of insight as you go.

I mean, is that one that you've just thought back a lot on and sort of really stayed with you?

It did.

I think about it a lot.

And what I realize is in CPS, we also want parents to react a certain way.

And that day,

this mom was not contrite.

She was not, you know, she was not apologetic.

She did not meet us at the door and say, I'll get this cleaned up by the end of the day.

And if that was the reaction, then things might have been different.

I think we want people to

comply and do exactly what we say when we say to do it.

And to your point, when someone is suffering through mental illness and mental health concerns, then they don't work on our timelines.

And we have to be considerate of that.

So I think I often consider our reaction to her.

It seemed like she didn't care.

It seemed like she was lackadaisical about cleaning up.

It seemed like all she wanted to do was, you know, spit vitriol at us.

But again, I've seen across cases that when parents react to us in certain ways, then we also sort of match that reaction with what we do next.

And I think we have to consider there's a reason behind this behavior.

As someone said one time, all behavior is communication.

So what exactly is she communicating right now?

We're in her home at eight o'clock in the morning.

We're walking through her home.

And yes, she's angry.

And if she wasn't angry, that would be a bit concerning to some people, right?

You know, thinking about mental health, right?

If you, if you're completely apathetic, then now we're also concerned about your mental health.

Right.

And you tell, there's a story in the book.

I believe it's the DEMA family.

Tell us that story and sort of what happened when you showed up at their door with a concern of abuse.

This is a white family and I was an investigator by this time.

I had made it through my internship and went through training.

It was about nine weeks of training and still green, but one of my early cases went out to a home of suspected child physical abuse and the school wanted us to check the child.

Generally, we have the child examined by our pediatric child abuse physician.

When I got to the home, I had a colleague with me and I fully assumed that it would be like any other case.

And that was a moment of clarity for me that we don't have as much power as we think we do.

I thought that, you know, he would let me in and I would be looking through his cupboards.

But as you read, that just wasn't the case.

And he apparently knew his rights and didn't want anything to do with us.

I had a glimpse at his son, but didn't look at him, didn't interview him, didn't get a chance to see any marks marks or bruises, and we did not take him down to the clinic to get examined.

So a lot of things that other moms would have done immediately and wouldn't have known to assert their rights, it was stopped right there in front of me on that day.

And it showed me a lot about the fact that we have got to do a better job of sharing with families and parents.

You do have rights and you do have the right to get an attorney or ask for help or ask questions and protect your family.

What do you want parents to know if they are dealing with the system?

Like to that point, because I think that really struck me too.

I think the way you phrased it was like all parents have rights, but only some feel like they can assert them.

And that's such a good point is that, like, not everyone has the same access sort of to their rights, right?

Because just because you have rights, if you can't fight the system, if you can't afford to, if you don't have the knowledge, the access, there's all kinds of barriers to why people can't go hire an attorney who knows those laws and fight on your behalf.

So what do you want parents to know if they are dealing with these systems?

Well, the tough part about this question is the racial aspect, because I don't know, I can assume what would have happened if that family was black.

So I could offer up advice to your listeners and say, if DCF comes to your home, don't open the door, call your attorney right away.

But I don't know what law enforcement will do in that scenario.

It might be a completely different scenario if I were to tell folks to do that.

But I'm inclined to.

I'm inclined to say, if they come to your home, before you do anything if you have an attorney if you have a friend who's an attorney call someone who can give you some legal advice if you feel comfortable call law enforcement if you and your kids are in your home and you haven't abused them and you want to make sure that there's some level of checks and balances you need to get someone else involved but again that advice is just tough because that racial component is there You know, when you talk about sort of CPS being all powerful in some contexts and then powerless in others, because that's what we've heard from some CPS workers and supervisors supervisors that we've talked to is like people think we have all this power and we really don't but I think there's like power in the perception of it too right because like if you are a white mom and you know that you can sort of assert yourself and stand up for yourself and that's not going to like ruin your life essentially it's not the same as if you're a black mom and you're worried that that's going to be taken and held against you in this way that it wouldn't be otherwise so you're right i mean it just couldn't be more complicated it's just the same way that not all traffic stops are equal right right And another issue that happened that's not in the book, that's you reminded me of this other issue where moms reach out to me all the time.

And recently I had a mom reach out, African-American woman.

And I also have a couple of attorneys that are amazing.

And sometimes I do a three-way call and I say, can you help this mom?

Like, I know that you can't be their counsel because maybe they can't afford you.

And the attorneys that I know.

you know, they'll hop on a call and answer some questions.

And recently we had a call with a mom and the attorney said, look, do whatever they tell you to do, apologize for your behavior, and this will be done pretty quickly.

And I just felt on the call really uncomfortable with that advice because again, I know why they said that.

And this was a black attorney, right?

I know why he told them to do that.

But can you imagine if that was a white attorney and a white person, right?

You know, that sort of advice would not be given.

So in that moment, I thought, why did I even call you?

But I know why I called them, but I understand what they were saying.

They were like, all I can tell you right now is if you want to get your kids back, do what they tell you and apologize every time you get a chance.

Oh,

yeah, that's really maddening because you're right, it's just not the same standard at all.

And it's like we can talk to people about the world the way we wish it was, or we can talk to them about the world the way it is.

And those two things are often in conflict.

And yeah, that's a great point.

So, you talk in the book about this journey of yours going from agent to advocate to activist.

Can you tell us about that framework?

I thought that was such a helpful framework for how to think about these like really daunting big picture things that we're talking about.

Sure.

So I take the reader through cases that I worked on where I had this agent of the state mindset.

And when you're an agent of the state, you carry out procedures in a really dehumanizing way because you're following protocol and you're doing what you were trained to do, right?

I think that these people are still doing their jobs and probably doing the best they can in that moment, but their mindset is really on.

finding an offender and providing a punishment and really sheltering that child and protecting them and really again finding someone who's who's to blame when you have that agent of the state mindset.

And then I talk about cases where I really developed into an advocate.

I became a social worker and I finished my social work degree and I started to really lean into autonomy and self-determination and parents have rights and social justice became really a mantra for me.

And I wanted to advocate for equity.

But I talk about the fact that often social workers, and I can say this because I'm a social worker, we do straddle the fence.

We uphold the status quo.

We often have an assimilationist mindset where we want to save kids.

You know, I became a social worker to save kids.

And when you have that mentality, you really strip families from strength they have to save their own families, right?

So I talk about how when I became this advocate, I did have this mentality of I know the data and I can really help these families and I can advocate for them.

But then there was even more I needed to do on myself.

There was even more development.

And I talk about a case that really pushed me into activism where I really wasn't holding up the status quo anymore.

I was saying out loud, it's an absolute atrocity what is happening to families in this system.

And I do not look at certain caseworkers as the issue.

I look at it systemically.

And I talk about systemic racism and how that impacts the work that we do.

So as an activist, you really talk about things that make others uncomfortable and you ask questions that there are no real answers to.

And because there are no answers to it's important to say okay how do we find those answers and how do we flip this system into one that can actually start answering them yeah i read an interview with you where you were talking about the fact that child welfare has a very very troubled history and so it sounds like some of these problems are really at the root can you walk us through just briefly like how did we get here you know i often talk about parents anonymous and parents Anonymous, many of the viewers might be aware of that.

It was created in the 1970s by a woman named Jolly Kay.

And Jolly Kay created Parents Anonymous because she abused her seven-year-old daughter and she wanted to create something similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous.

Really, this individual will look at you as a person and why are you hurting your child?

And it was an acclaimed sort of group that she assembled.

She was all over the news during this era.

She was interviewed on television.

She also was interviewed and presented at Congress.

And ultimately, Parents Anonymous grew to over a thousand chapters and she refuted any racial or social disadvantage.

And she really looked at the abuse as a very individual problem.

She believed that if you come to these groups and we help you with self-fulfillment, and we help you develop your personal psychological issues, then you will stop doing what you're doing.

And I tell people, if we look at the policies that happened since Jolly Kay and since Parents Anonymous, I mean, Parents Anonymous was propelled across the country through a pretty big policy known as CAPTA, the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act.

And it endorsed Parents Anonymous and created funding for it.

And I tell people all the time, if you're wondering why we look at parents the way we look at them, It's probably because a lot of our policies were written based on this individual mindset of you're the problem.

These parents are are the problem.

And if you know anything about CPS, you know that most parents get a case plan, and many of them are identical.

Because again, we're saying, okay, the parent is the problem.

So if we develop you, then things will get better.

Could that be a lever development?

Sure, but it can't be the only lever.

So I tell people that historically we have created a narrative that this is a very individual problem and that racial and social environmental issues have nothing to do with child abuse.

And that just can't be the reality if we're looking at almost 80% of families dealing with neglect.

That is sort of a deeply American ethos, right?

Of like, it's an individual thing.

It's an individual problem.

It's a you problem.

It's a self-help problem, you know?

And yeah, just like to sort of ignore all those things.

And even as you're talking about her, I'm like, well, even if that approach was effective, it would only apply to 24% of the cases.

So you still have the majority that are not falling in that like, I'm here because I abuse my kids.

So yeah, well, that is really helpful.

So, okay, now the big question

is, where do we go from here?

How do we fix it, Dr.

Bryce?

So I get this question a lot.

So I'll start by saying that there are no easy answers, but there are a lot of people that are concerned with the child welfare system right now.

And two things come to mind when people say, what can we do?

Where can we go?

I always tell people the first thing is.

As caseworkers, as child welfare professionals, as medical professionals, garden ad litem, the child welfare community, I believe that we don't have to wait on policies to change.

Now, we need policies to change, but we can also do some changing inwardly, right?

We can look at ourselves and decide that the next time I talk to a person, a mom, a dad, a child, I'm going to do all I can to not dehumanize them.

I'm going to do all I can to share power with them, right?

And I tell people,

You can do that even if you have to make, in my opinion, removing a child from their family is the nuclear option.

Like it is a really big decision and it is traumatic all around.

And sometimes it has to be done.

And even if you do that, what about kinship care?

What about still keeping parents, if applicable, part of the process and encouraging them, hey, we want this family back together.

We're with you.

We just have to see some things change, right?

But often we remove a child and their parents become the enemy, right?

If there is a way to reconcile and bring this family back together, we can't push parents away.

So that's the first thing I'll say.

I want the community to look at the next family they talk to and try to engage them in a different way.

And I think that that will help again.

The larger scale things we have to do is shift policies.

I mean, the policies that govern our work create mandated reporting, right?

The influx of cases that are coming in are crippling the system.

And we talked about this earlier on this podcast.

These cases are coming in.

Caseworkers are drowning.

So how can they do justice-centered casework, right?

With all of these cases coming in.

So I think we have to figure out how to shorten, minimize, limit the front door to child welfare, because the front door is wide open.

I have a theory that no one listens to that I don't think that child welfare should be even engaged in work with families that are dealing with poverty.

To me, poverty is not a child abuse issue, right?

So I think that when it comes to certain types of neglect, That shouldn't go to child abuse investigations.

That shouldn't go to the child welfare system.

I hope one day a policy enacts that.

But I think that that would really take the strain off of our system.

For the record, Dr.

Price, I 100% agree with you

because you do, you read about these cases.

And I'm thinking like, you know, again, Jatoya was one that just stuck with me so much because she was clearly being regarded as a mom who wasn't doing what she was supposed to do because she couldn't and because there was this huge burden on her of having to fight this case.

And like, there's so many conversations right now that are like almost intruding on this conversation in this way.

I mean, we have, you know, some of these like parental rights stuff when it's around, you know, oh, I don't want my kids to learn about race in school and that kind of thing.

And some of this stuff about like the system is stealing kids and sort of a huge distraction from what the actual systemic problem is.

And if you had that sort of assessment right away of like, is this poverty?

Are we just looking at poverty?

And like, let's fix that.

You think about, you know, these sort of stipends and stuff that go to foster parents and you're like, couldn't you just give that money to the parents?

And then like that would solve the problem.

Like that seems very straightforward to me but obviously it is that mindset of like oh they're bad parents we need to take the kids away and give them to these other people who are good parents because they volunteered to be foster parents or adoptive parents or what have you so yeah i completely agree with you and you know again we sort of see it from this other i mean i think it's two sides of the same coin you know we always hear that cps their caseloads and they oftentimes reject over and over again or nothing sort of gets done about cases of legitimate abuse and not just medical child abuse like child sex abuse and like all these other things that sort of sit on people's desks or whatever.

And it's like, well, yeah, because they're totally overwhelmed dealing with people who are just in poverty and would not be abusive parents.

So it is, it's really maddening.

So yeah, I'm with you there.

I don't think poor people belong in this system at all.

It's not a fair fight at all.

And I'll also just add that, you know, a lot of people are pushing kinship care placement.

And I think that some people who look at me and look at my work, they assume that I'm saying no kids should ever be taken out of their home.

And that's not what I say.

There are some advocates that don't believe any child should be taken out of their home, but I'm not one of them.

I say sometimes that has to happen, but I don't understand why we can't do a better job of keeping the child with people who already know them and already love them.

When I talk to caseworkers, I say, ask yourself that.

Who already knows this child?

Who already loves this child?

And with that question, we've had teachers step up, neighbors, friends.

if there's no family.

So we're trying to keep a level of belonging within that child.

And science of belonging says that kids feel like they belong with folks who already know them.

So again, we have to do certain things, but how can we take a second step to think about what's best for the child?

Yeah, I really love that you said that because I think something that I talked to some of my colleagues on the committee about, you know, especially those who I work closely with.

is this idea that even in these cases where there's really severe abuse, the alternative may not be any better.

And that's just like a horrible reality to look at.

Like there are cases like the one we talked about last season where where one, they ended up with the dad who was protective.

And then the other one, you know, she went to a family member.

But I've also heard of cases where kids got out of that situation, removed, and rightfully so, because that mother was putting their life at risk.

But then they ended up in foster care and were abused there and had this horrible experience there.

And you're sort of like, well, that's like out of the frying pan, into the fire.

So it's like, how can we also make sure that like in those situations where a child really does have to be removed, how can you sort of keep it from being that most traumatizing experience?

Absolutely.

And I think that when we place children with kin or with familial kin, right, friends of the family, we should approach them and treat them like we do foster parents with support and services.

And that doesn't often happen.

And I think that that is a huge fault line in the system where we see them differently.

We say, okay, we put the child with her aunt.

and we're done with this but you're not done with that like you need to make sure that that aunt has what she needs to care for this child to the best of her ability yeah okay well Well, thank you so much.

Is there anything else you want to say to our listeners before we go?

This has been such a great conversation.

I really appreciate it.

I know that you said many of your listeners are physicians and medical staff.

So first of all, I want to say thank you for even listening into this conversation.

I know that the decisions you have to make aren't easy, but I just want to say that marginalized families are really feeling the brunt of systemic.

issues in child welfare.

And I encourage you to just pursue awareness and do the best you can when it comes to the most vulnerable that come into your offices and your facilities.

Thank you so much, Dr.

Price.

So we're going to include the- I hope that's what you were looking for.

Oh, that was so perfect.

You know, I really wanted to give our listeners like a big zoom out because sometimes people, you know, I think just like people sort of say, like, well, you don't want any kids removed.

Sometimes people are like, well, you just want to snatch babies away.

I'm like, no, I really don't.

I was like, if they think I'm in opposition to Dr.

Price, I don't think they're right about that.

But yeah, so I think there is so much nuance.

And I'm aware of sort of like how complicated the intersection of these systems, like, you know, medical and child welfare and then police.

And I mean, it's like, there's just so much.

So I really appreciate you helping us unpack this.

Well, thank you so much.

And I appreciate you reading the book.

And I always enjoy hearing feedback.

And I, a big thing that I wanted people to see, have you read Evicted?

No, no, but it's on my list.

Yeah.

Well, I read it a few years ago, but I just, I always tell people that when I read Evicted, it was so hard to read it because it's about obviously landlords and poor families, but you realize that there's multiple truths, right?

Like landlords have a job to do and these families need help.

And that really helped me with my book because I wanted people to see that don't think that these caseworkers are villains.

They just, they're people trying to do their jobs and also don't think that parents are villains because they're also trying to do their jobs as parents.

So I appreciate your feedback on that because that's exactly what I was trying to do.

No, it was really well done.

And I just thought like you brought such humanity to the whole conversation.

And it was a page turner.

You just, you did a great job with the narrative piece.

So, okay, well, we'll let you go, Dr.

Price, but please do keep in touch and I'll let you know when this episode is going to air.

And we'll include all the links to your book, your TED Talk, all that stuff.

Great.

Thank you all.

Take care.