Parent Trap: When County Won’t Give Your Kids Back

Pete isn’t claiming he’s the best father in the world, but he’s convinced he can do a better job raising his two young children than the County of Orange.

Now if he can just get the county to give them back.

And that raises the ticklish question of the day: Whose kids are these, anyway?

The painful reality for Pete (I’m purposely not using his last name) is that his children, a daughter 7 and a son 6, belong for the time being to the county. They have spent the last year in a group home in Orange, with several other children, and under the supervision of county social workers.

The story is rooted in all-too-familiar soil: Pete and his ex-wife had a stormy relationship, one that didn’t provide a stable home environment for their children. In January, 1990, the couple separated, and Pete, believing that he would have no chance at custody, agreed to let his wife take the children.

A year later, apparently acting on a tip that the children may have been abused, the Huntington Beach Police Department picked up his children at school and placed them in protective custody.

Pete says his attorney advised that the best route for eventually getting the children back would be to allow them to become wards of the county, a suggestion he accepted.

As part of the county’s effort to reunite the family, a court-approved plan was drawn up for Pete and his ex-wife. Pete contends that he has performed every task required of him, including counseling (which his wife dropped out of), joining an adult-support group (Parents Without Partners, of which he is now chapter president) and even writing an essay about what he thinks his children need at home.

“They (the county) are so busy trying to get us (him and his ex-wife) to get along that they’ve forgotten about the kids,” Pete said, talking recently in his San Clemente home about the kids he wants back. “One expression I’m tired of hearing is ‘the best interest of the kids.’ They say everything is being done in the best interest of the kids, but sitting in that home is not in their best interest.”

Eugene Howard, the county’s director of children’s services, is not at liberty to discuss Pete’s case specifically, but said any parent always has the option of petitioning the Juvenile Court to regain custody. If the parent makes that claim, the caseworker has to convince the judge that the parent isn’t ready to regain custody.

I asked Howard if a parent who loses custody has to adhere to a higher parental standard before getting the children back than one whose children never enter the county system.

No, Howard said. Standards are “fairly minimal” regarding return to their natural home, he said. “It doesn’t have to be a perfect home.”

Is a group considered a good environment for children? I asked Howard.

“If our judgment is that a family is not capable of taking care of the kids, whether that’s because it’s physically or emotionally not a situation where kids can handle it, then being in a group home where the kids are getting proper treatment is a better place for them at that point in time. Not forever, for sure, but at that point in time.”

Early in 1991, Pete was given custodial care of his children for several months. That ended one day in August of last year when a social worker arrived at his home and said she was reclaiming the children. Pete said she told him later they had acted out some improper sexual behavior, which he insists stems from their problems with his ex-wife. Pete is not, officials confirmed, suspected of any physical abuse of the children.

“When we started this whole mess, I thought I was the person they should be with,” Pete said. “But in the time they were with me, I saw the other side of the coin, how tough it was. I wasn’t mentally prepared. I was given the momentous task of trying to get myself in order in life and get them brought around to where they were more stable. But now that I’ve matured, I’m now clear that, yeah, I want to do this.”

Now, Pete says he’s growing increasingly impatient and frustrated in his efforts to get his children back--exactly the emotions he knows he’s supposed to contain to convince the county he’s the parent who should regain custody.

“My daughter says she wants to live with me, but if that can’t happen, she wants it to be over with,” Pete said, referring to the uncertainty. “They want out of the group home. That’s very obvious. They’re tired of living there. They have nothing of their own there. The part that’s upsetting me is that they (county officials) are not solving anything. They’re making the kids pay for the adults’ mistakes. I asked them point-blank why I can’t have the kids back. They won’t tell me. How much power does the county have? If I’m, let’s say, a felon, cite me, prosecute me, give the kids to my ex and all this will be over. There’s nothing on me other than anger and animosity toward my ex. . . .”

At an elemental level, you can sympathize with Pete: the more he wants to get his children back, the slower things seem to go and the more frustrated he comes across. It’s a vicious cycle.

I also have an ingrained bias in favor of social workers. In my heart of hearts I know they want to do right by children. Lord knows in many cases the state (or county) is the only thing standing between kids and destructive homes.

But listening to Pete talk about his frustrations, he hardly sounds like a lackluster father. He may still not be the perfect dad, but there’s no absence of passion in his talking about getting his kids back.

“People without children are deciding my children’s fate,” Pete said. “Some of them are not even married, let alone not having children. They don’t feel the emotional attachment when someone else is pulling the strings. They say, ‘Get on with your life,’ but I tell them I can’t when they have my two most important possessions.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.