Objective Summary

Turning Stones: My Days and Nights with Children at Risk by Marc Parent is a story
about Marc Parents time working as a caseworker for four years at the Emergency Childrens
Services in New York. Parent gives stories of cases he went on and the thought process he went
through throughout the entire time, driving to the case, walking into the door, speaking with the
parent, and then taking the child away. Every single case spoke about in the book is something
that happened during the time he was working there and talked about from his first-person
perspective. His job is to decide whether or not the situation in the house is dangerous for the
child at hand and if they need to be taken from the home.
Parent weaves his argument throughout the different stories involved in the book of
public scrutiny of the child welfare system and agencies involved in that but also gives
commentary about protecting the children and that they should always come first. There are
times throughout the book where you will see him question whether or not his decision to take a
child out of there home was the best decision for them in the long run. He brings up the idea that
the child welfare system and the agencies should be looked and at criticized by the public but the
public should also take into consideration the children who are at stake. For example, there was a
case he wrote about in the book where a single mother of 5 was forcing her children to jump out
of there 23 story window as a sacrifice to god. In times of that, he thinks you have to consider the
children because if child services hasnt stepped in when they did, all five would have died
instead of two.