Review by Booklist Review
Pryce began her career in child protective services as an intern, then spent years serving as a CPS caseworker before ultimately leaving the profession to pursue a career as a researcher and activist. During her time at CPS, she began to recognize how she and her fellow caseworkers were complicit in a system that victimized Black mothers and families, failed to rectify the underlying systemic failures that led to CPS involvement, and worst of all, created new and lasting trauma in the lives of the children they served. Broken is a deeply personal, vulnerable story of Pryce's journey into activism, as she began to witness CPS' failings, both as a caseworker and as a close friend to Black mothers whose children had been taken away. Pryce argues that we must advocate for revolutionary change that more effectively protects children from abuse and neglect but prioritizes keeping families together. This book will appeal to readers interested in social reform and the abolition of the carceral state, and it makes a strong pairing with Dorothy Roberts' Torn Apart (2022).
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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Pryce debuts with a harrowing memoir of her former career as an investigator for Child Protective Services and her eventual reckoning with the system's structural inequities. As a CPS investigator in Tallahassee, Fla., Pryce responded to anonymous reports of child abuse and neglect. At first trusting in the process, she later came to see the system as geared toward hasty child removal rather than careful consideration of each case. After a close friend was investigated by CPS, Pryce came to believe that families being separated were disproportionately poor and Black, and that it would be better to provide more support to struggling families before resorting to child removal. She eventually left the department and became an advocate for reform. While Pryce's initial naivety almost beggars belief--she recalls being so unattuned to problems with the system that she reported her own sister to CPS, shocking even her coworkers--the narrative is all the more riveting for her total immersion in the ideology. Readers will be troubled and enthralled by Pryce's detailed reconstructions of disturbing scenes in which she and other investigators entered messy and dysfunctional homes for confrontations with clearly neglectful but also desperate and ill-equipped parents. Equally noteworthy is Pryce's careful spelling out of how workplace camaraderie provides cover for the persistence of bad policy. It's an invaluable insider account of a pressing social issue. (Mar.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Pryce (social work, Florida State Univ.) reveals what it's like to work as a child protective services (CPS) investigator, the differences that parents' race and class make in outcomes, and the effects of CPS investigations on Black women. The book recounts Pryce's three years as a Florida CPS investigator before she became an academic and an advocate for reform. While written for professionals in the social work industry, her accessible book presents case studies of wrenching decisions made under intense time constraints. She cites rigid policies, the pressure to remove children from their families, and the different standards employed for Black families and white families. CPS, Pryce argues, is ill-equipped to deal with the racist foundations of child welfare, the housing crisis, and mental-illness stigmas. The book concludes with discussion questions regarding the featured case studies, which challenge readers to consider how CPS could have handled the situations differently. VERDICT Parents and child-welfare professionals will benefit from this excellent work that gives an insider's view of child protective services. Pair with We Were Once a Family by Roxanna Asgarian.--Harry Charles
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A child welfare activist tells the story of how she went from working with Child Protective Services to advocating for a complete overhaul. Pryce began interning at CPS shortly after enrolling in a social work master's degree program at Florida State. At first, she believed her job would simply entail "making sure that kids [were] safe." When she transitioned into a full-time role as a CPS investigator, however, recurring nightmares hinted that her work was far more problematic than she'd realized. Trauma seemed a built-in part of every case she worked on--and not just because of the parent/child separations CPS often enforced. Families, most of whom were Black, found themselves subjected to processes and procedures that never took into account individual circumstances and sometimes did more harm than good. Determined to find ways to speak on behalf of struggling parents rather than being part of a system that punished them, Pryce went into academia. During that time, she was asked to give expert witness testimony in a CPS court case, where she observed how systemic racism worked against an (ultimately innocent) Black mother named Jatoia. An episode of public domestic violence had caused Jatoia and her husband, Lawrence, to be charged with felony child abuse. Jatoia was fully exonerated after Lawrence confessed to dropping their infant son while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Yet CPS still legally terminated Jatoia's parental rights. "A realization hit me with nauseating force: The system had more power than I ever knew," writes the author, who began to work directly with community activists to support parents "reeling" from a white supremacist system bent on policing families rather than helping to rehabilitate them. As compelling as it is humane, Pryce's book offers timely insight into a racist institution in desperate need of reform. An illuminating, necessary sociological report. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
