Court Assails Boy’s Removal From Family : Social services: Orange County agency put 4-year-old in foster home because parents’ house was messy. Appellate justices call its reasons ‘trivial.’

An appellate court has assailed Orange County’s Social Services Agency for removing a 4-year-old boy from his home because his parents were poor housekeepers.

The case involved a possibly autistic boy, identified as Paul E. of Huntington Beach, who was placed in a foster home in May after social workers reported that his parents kept a messy house. That punishment is usually reserved for cases in which children are seriously abused or face great harm in their current living conditions.

In the ruling issued Wednesday, the 4th District Court of Appeal criticized the Social Services Agency for separating the boy from his home, holding that “mere chronic messiness in housekeeping” does not justify a child’s removal from his parents.

“County social service agencies cannot cast themselves in the role of a super-OSHA for families,” wrote Presiding Justice David Sills, referring to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which enforces workplace safety regulations.

On a visit to the youngster’s residence, social workers said they found a lamp socket with an electrical short, a propeller protruding from a boat outside the house and a small child’s plastic wading pool filled with dirty water in the back yard.

But Sills said the hazards cited by the county agency were “trivial to the point of being pretextual.”

“A shorted lamp socket could occur in the White House,” Sills wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. “Motorboats normally have propellers on them. Children’s plastic wading pools do not come with filtration systems on them, and if they are filled with water for any amount of time, the water is going to get dirty.”

“Worse hazards than these may be found on practically every farm in America,” he continued. “If such conditions were sufficient for removal from the home, generations of Americans who grew up on farms and ranches would have spent their childhoods in foster care.”

Larry Leaman, director of the Social Services Agency, and Deputy County Counsel Gene Axelrod, who argued the case for the agency, did not return telephone calls seeking comment on the ruling.

The panel’s decision means the 4-year-old, who has remained in the Buena Park foster home during the legal battle, may soon be reunited with his parents--unless the county appeals the ruling.

John L. Dodd, a Tustin lawyer who represented the boy’s father in the case, said he was pleased the justices concluded that social workers were overzealous in removing the child.

“This wouldn’t have happened if the parent was a multimillionaire who was an eccentric garbage collector with a pile of bric-a-brac in his yard,” Dodd said. “It’s crazy for social workers to seize a parents’ child just because they don’t live under the standards of a Newport Beach gate-guarded community. Just because you don’t have a perfect yard does not mean someone can take away your kids.”

Before he was taken away by social workers, Paul lived with his parents and grandmother. The court’s opinion, which described Paul as “possibly autistic,” said he “is loved by both his parents, Stephen and Susan.” Paul has “never been abused, or neglected, and his parents enrolled him in a special school for his needs.”

Susan is described in the opinion as slightly developmentally disabled, which qualifies her for federal disability payments. She is “devoted to her son” and even though she is a little slow to grasp the need to childproof her home, she “is also willing to follow her son around all day to keep him from hurting himself,” the opinion states.

Paul’s father, Stephen, has been unable to find work because of a criminal record.

The family’s problems with the county agency began in July, 1994, when social workers reported that conditions in the grandmother’s house were unsanitary.

During the next seven months, Paul’s parents made improvements in their living conditions, but social workers worried about their abilities as parents, the opinion states.

In April, 1995, when social workers gave Susan and Stephen 30 days to remedy the hazards involving the propeller, lamp socket and plastic wading pool, they responded by fixing them within eight days, according to the court ruling.

Yet social workers returned eight days later to take Paul into custody.

Temporary Orange County Superior Court Judge Gary G. Bischoff later approved a petition by county social workers to place Paul in a foster home, starting a process that could have led eventually to the permanent separation of the child from his parents.

But Wednesday the 4th District reversed the judgment.

Sills said the appellate panel was “not unsympathetic” to the social service agency’s concerns and recognized that removal of a child “represents perhaps the biggest stick [the agency] can wield in getting recalcitrant parents to clean up their act--in this case, by literally cleaning up their house.”

“While we certainly hope conditions improve in Paul’s household, chronic messiness by itself and apart from any unsanitary conditions or resulting illness or accident is just not clear and convincing evidence” to remove the child, the court said.

Dodd, the father’s lawyer, said the parents are eagerly awaiting Paul’s return. He said Susan and Stephen have had weekly visits with the boy since his removal.

Said Dodd: “I hope in these times of massive county government cutbacks, the Social Services Agency will take this opinion to heart and concentrate their efforts on children who are truly being abused.”