Lawyer Lynn Keller was asked Monday if she had any objections to a delay of trial in which a mother is fighting for the return of three daughters taken into Children's Aid Society custody two years and 10 months ago. The eldest is now 10.

The question was from Judge Jennifer Blishen during a family court hearing in which she was being asked to grant an adjournment to allow the mother time to find a new lawyer and prepare for trial.

Ms. Keller said she had no problem with a further delay. "I represent three children who want to go home."

Ottawa-Carleton CAS lawyer Andrew Fobert argued there have already been too many delays, and the children need "closure." He said proceeding immediately to make the children Crown wards was "in the best interests of the children." During his submission, he repeated the "best interests" line four times.

The grandfather of the children was in Courtroom 25 and also asked by Judge Blishen for an opinion. "These delays have been caused by the CAS. These are our grandchildren ... " He choked up and couldn't continue.

Judge Blishen granted the delay, and 10 days in May have been set aside for trial.

Complicating the issue was that the mother fired her lawyer, Ross Stewart, on March 2. After more than two years, she lost confidence in him. With the trial date approaching, he was advising her to sign over her children to state care in a voluntary agreement to Crown wardship. With only two weeks to go to the scheduled start of trial on the custody issue, she was unable to find a lawyer to take on such a major file on such short notice.

Lawyer Frank Armitage stepped in as a friend of the court to argue the mother's case for delay. He said the mother would be incapable of representing herself in something as important as a custody battle with the state. He couldn't find time in his schedule to take the case. Lawyer Wendy Rogers was gowned and standing by. If the judge agreed to the delay, she was prepared to represent the parents.

Judge Blishen said it appeared the children were hung up in the system mainly because of delays in court-ordered assessments by the Family Court Clinic.

This family last appeared in this column in December 1998. At that time, bookkeepers at social services hadn't been able to keep up with changes, and the parents were still receiving support based on being a family of five. To visit their children at CAS headquarters in Gloucester, the parents had to show up with groceries as part of a plan to balance the state's books.

The father has since been denied visiting rights, and mother's visits have been cut down to the point she can see only one of her daughters each week. That means each child sees her mother once every three weeks.

Families in CAS care or disputes can't be identified. That mother lost confidence is an understatement. But she kept fighting. She says she was told her chances of getting her children back would be much better if she separated from the father, who has a drinking problem. The children were originally taken into care in May 1997 by CAS authorities, responding to a report children were in the care of a man who had been drinking. There was previous history; most of it from mother turning to the CAS for help.

The parents separated for a few months last year, but she rebelled. She married the father last month. She pointed out he has never been accused of abuse or neglect, and he is working at his substance-abuse problems. She said it is her opinion children can't be the losers if they have parents who loved each other.

In an early assessment of the mother, Gregory Motayne, a psychiatrist with the Family Court Clinic, reported the mother's determined efforts to make a good impression during her assessment skewed results. One can only guess at what would have happened had she gone to the assessment determined to make a bad impression.

Another assessment was ordered, and it was done again by Dr. Motayne. He concluded his 24-page report by supporting the CAS. His last words: "... continuation of the medical and psychotherapeutic management of the children, as indicated by the professional caregivers, is supported."

But on page 19 of the same report, he acknowledges one of the children has been abused while in state care. She has been through half a dozen "placements" (foster homes) and reported being abused by two foster parents, "one of which was substantiated." Despite everything, he said the girl presented as "very engaging, overly talkative and bright."

The eldest child's school records while in the care of her parents were average. Since being taken into protective custody, she has gone through almost a dozen foster homes and has been treated at least twice at the Royal Ottawa Hospital for emotional and behavioural problems.

The paperwork shows children, with no record of abuse by their parents, taken into state care and abused. It shows the system has gone beyond protecting children and is indulging in rating parents.

As mother lost faith in the system, she started recording everything. They may never make it into court, but there are audio tapes with wrenching pleas from little girls who want to go home. They miss their father too.

After so much time, the files have built to several inches thick and include endless detail, including mother's epilepsy, and her attempts to upgrade her education being thwarted by an inability to concentrate because her children are always on her mind.

After the delay was granted, Ms Rogers signed on as the parents' new counsel. Her first bit of advice was to remind them they have at this point won only a delay. They still have a tough fight ahead.

In the almost three years since her children were taken, mother has not been able to speak to any of the judges who have processed her case. She finds that hard to understand.

It won't be easy for a 12-year-old girl to run back to her mother and father again. According to the parents, they were told she has been moved to a new group home at least three times as far away.

When her story was told in this column Thursday, she had biked some 30 kilometres from a Children's Aid Society group home in a rural area to the city. She had been with her parents for six days and they had no indication authorities were searching for her. Nobody stopped by their home. There were no calls.

The girl was apprehended the day after the story appeared. On the advice of their lawyer, the parents didn't resist. The child is begging to get into a courtroom, saying she wants to talk to a judge. Her lawyer has promised her that's possible. She has promised her lawyer, and anybody else who will listen, if it doesn't happen quickly she will run again.

The eldest of three sisters, she has been separated from her parents since May of 1997 and is demanding an end to it. At the end of a two-week trial in June, 2000, lawyer Lynn Keller made an impassioned plea in front of Judge Jennifer Blishen, saying enough was enough and to "let my clients go home." The three had been in the system more than three years, waiting for decisions.

There was never a doubt, said the judge, about love. "The children love their parents and the parents love their children."

The runaway's two younger sisters are in separate foster homes. Judge Blishen, ruling in what she said was the "best interests" of the sisters, made them Crown wards with access. They could continue to have supervised visits with their parents four times a year.

The court acknowledged abuse was not an issue, nor was neglect. The father is an alcoholic who hadn't met conditions imposed by earlier courts. The family environment was ruled unsuitable until the man showed more control over his disease. Earlier courts also wanted mother to improve her life skills and education.

"We have tried," mother said yesterday. "We both have jobs and (husband) has a spot waiting for him at a treatment centre. He's going to try again." As much as she wants her husband to break his cycle of drinking, she says he is not abusive or a threat to the children.

The family has a long history of contact with CAS. Mother was raised in "the system" and knows about life in a group home. ("They took our shoes so we couldn't run.") The protection agency became her concept of a parent and when her relationship with her husband became strained, she turned to social workers. She now says that was a mistake. Social workers keep notes and they were compiled and presented as evidence. She says the problem was nobody kept notes of the good times.

Group homes, like child protection agencies, are secretive places. One of the most knowledgeable outsiders in the field is former high school vice principal and teacher Jeri Lunney of Almonte. Using Access to Information, she has put together facts and figures that caused the Municipality of Mississippi Mills, which includes Almonte, to put a one-year freeze on new group homes.

After watching the action around a home for troubled girls, she started researching. "One thing I know is if adults are not in charge, children will take charge and they will seek the lowest common denominator." They will emulate the behaviour of the worst among them.

Mrs. Lunney says although she doesn't have access to what happens inside the group home, she has uncovered what she calls "eye-opening facts." Her records show the group home she watches is one of five operated as "entrepreneurial enterprises" by the same private company.

She has documents showing the per diem rate per child may fluctuate, but appears to be in the neighbourhood of $170 a day. "Clearly this is a multi-million dollar business, yet they are taxed as residential homes, not as businesses." She says there is nothing in the legislation that spells out qualifications for workers in the homes, and refers to them simply as "shift workers."

This kind of information caused Mississippi Mills to pause to study the situation.

Mrs. Lunney says she has been accused of being a NIMBY (not in my back yard) but she isn't trying to shut down or chase away a group home. "Living close to one I see problems and I want to see them addressed."

The question of our age that gives courts, child protectors and families the biggest problem is: What is in the best interest of the child?

I'd put at the top of any list of answers -- speed.

At my age, a month blurs by at the speed of a day. I can remember how, as a kid, a week seemed forever.

During the past three weeks, I've reported the plight of a 12-year-old girl separated from her parents since May 1997. It took legal processes more than three years (40 months) to end her uncertainty about whether or not she could go back to her parents. In September 2000, Judge Jennifer Blishen made the child a Crown ward and that meant the answer was a definite no. It was wardship with access and she could see her parents four times a year.

In my memories of childhood, I can think of nothing more terrifying than to be separated from my parents. This child had to experience that pulling away every weekend for years, and then four times a year.

On June 7, she ran away from a group home in a rural area and biked about 30 kilometres to her parents' home in the city. It created a legal mess. The parents were in jeopardy because they were breaking court orders by harbouring her. She was there a week before authorities picked her up, and this time she was taken to a group home about three times as far away.

We talked before she disappeared into the system again. She was under the impression she would be able to appear in front of a judge within a week. She said if more than a week went by she would run again.

"I know that's what she told you," said her lawyer, Lynn Keller. "But that's not the case. The ball is in the parents' court. They have to show there have been changes (in the parents' circumstances) that would show there would be no risk if she returned to the home."

The parents' lawyer is Wendy Rogers. How soon can the issue get back in front of a judge? "I don't have any idea at the moment. I'm working on it ... I'm bringing forward an application and I cannot give you a time when it will be before the court."

Yesterday, the runaway told her parents by telephone she was under close supervision and couldn't leave the group home unless accompanied by a staff member. According to mother, she's threatening to run again and feels promises have been broken again.

Lawyer Keller says the girl is now old enough to attend court, but whether or not she would be allowed to speak would be entirely up to the judge. "She may at a hearing be allowed to speak. I can ask on her behalf to be heard ... I'm sure you're familiar with the court system and it doesn't happen that quickly.

"I know she prefers to be at home and the court knows that too."

One of the primary reasons for her removal from the home was that the father is an acknowledged alcoholic and had not satisfied authorities that he was doing enough to solve that problem. Abuse or neglect weren't issues and the judge acknowledged the parents loved their children and the children loved their parents. Two younger sisters were also removed and are in foster homes. The middle child, according to the parents, also still expressed a desire to return home.

To allow this to happen, the parents would have to show a court there would be no risk if the child returned home.

There's something out of whack here. This is a child at risk. She's running and threatening to keep doing it. Her parents reported yesterday she was allowed to call from the group home, apparently in an attempt to calm her down.

The father says: "A staff member broke the connection because (my daughter) was swearing and threatening. Then (the staff member) called back to apologize for hanging up and said she would allow (my daughter) to speak again only if she settled down. I could hear her in the background. She wasn't settling down."

The Child and Family Services Act forbids identifying anybody involved in child protection issues if it can lead to the identity of the child.

Would the child be any less at risk if allowed to return to her parents? What is her current level of risk? In the grinding legal industry that is the family court, when is long enough long enough?

Courts slow down as insiders take summer vacations. In 2000, the two-week trial that made the child and her sisters Crown wards ended in June -- but the decision wasn't handed down until September. Is a system this slow in a child's best interest?

In our attempts to protect this child we are putting her at risk.

*Dave Brown is the Citizen's senior editor. Send e-mail to dbrown@thecitizen.southam.ca Read previous columns by Dave Brown at www.ottawacitizen.com Dave Brown will return in a month.

She's a Crown ward, just 13, and twice this summer ran from group homes. This week after two months on the loose, she was told by her lawyer she could live with her parents. She calls and we talk. She always has the same question. "Why?" Her real name can't be used.

Dear Polly:

To understand the answer to your why, you first have to understand the meaning of the word "zealot." That's a person who is carried away by his/her zeal, or support for a cause. When it comes to protecting children, all of us have a bit of the zealot in us.

Our forefathers knew that, so over hundreds of years developed laws and courts that would protect us from ourselves and our zealotry. In this country, we depended on the Criminal Code of Canada for that protection. It is designed to protect us from unfair prosecution, and there are rules of evidence that insist on fact. They resist trends that may be passing themselves off as sciences.

Some thirty years ago, we decided children, to be properly protected, had to have more rights than other people, so we started setting up new courts to get around the Criminal Code. They are called family courts. They accept evidence that wouldn't be allowed in a criminal court. They accept psychology as a science and believe people trained in that field can predict human behaviour. In 1693, in a place called Salem, 19 people were killed when a court accepted witch-hunting as a science.

I've followed your story closely since you were taken into protective custody in May 1997. I've met your parents and grandparents. I've met their friends and neighbours and the minister of your mom's church. In 2000, I spent a week in a courtroom watching a family court struggle for answers. The words "best interests of the child" were repeated over and over.

Your mom and dad were on trial. They didn't know it because they weren't charged with anything. There was no evidence of neglect or abuse and the court recognized love in your family. By then you had been held in limbo for three years waiting for a decision and would have to wait another four months for the judge's written ruling making you a Crown ward.

Through all that time, you had to experience the trauma of being torn away from them again. The whole protection system would have looked silly after so much time had it said: Oops.

In your case, the strongest evidence against your mom and dad was presented by a psychiatrist. Your mom's lawyer put him through a tough cross-examination for almost a full day. Among things learned was that many "observations" he based his opinions on were not his, but passed along to him by child protection workers.

In a traditional court that would be called hearsay evidence and wouldn't be allowed. Such courts also don't accept opinion. They demand fact. The tough cross-examination made the doctor appear less an expert witness and more a typist. He explained his role: "Accuracy is not as important as consistency."

Polly, I think that means if enough people say so, a person is a witch.

Your mom and dad lost you to state care mainly because they were found to be flawed. Factors included your dad's alcoholism and your mom's epilepsy. Would your mom be able to protect you from your dad should the need arise? Your mom said she loved your dad, but in the opinion of the expert witness that showed her to be "co-dependant." He believed her love put her in a position to be manipulated. Those of us who love know that's one point he got right.

You're still in limbo as we zealously try to figure out what is in your best interests.

Last week, a survey showed 90 per cent of Canadians admitted they knew very little about how our courts operate. Look at the bright side, kiddo. You're in the top 10 per cent.

An unhappy 13-year-old girl classified as a runner from children's residences (group homes) last year kept finding her way to her parents and demanding the system allow her to stay. It appeared she won.

She is now back in custody. Four of these columns were based on her plight last year.

This case is getting difficult to follow because so much of it is happening in informal sessions. Child-protection authorities won't/can't discuss individual cases and lawyers are reluctant to talk.

Father has been taken out of the picture. The runner hasn't made contact with me as she often did last year, and that leaves only mother's version of events.

It's a case I've watched for several years, including many days in courtrooms. The story caught my attention because the slow pace of court processes in this case seemed cruel. The child was first taken into care in May 1997 and it took the system more than three years (40 months) to make a decision about whether she could return to her parents.

The answer was no. She was made a Crown ward. She had two younger sisters taken into care at the same time but they seem to have adapted. They don't show the same drive to get home.

Abuse or neglect weren't the issues. Father is by his own admission an alcoholic. Mother was raised "in the system" and looked at social workers almost as family. When there was stress in the family she called Children's Aid Society in much the same way another woman may call parents or a sister. She didn't realize it, but child-protection workers keep notes and her file grew thick.

Last fall a court issued a temporary order allowing daughter to stay with her parents, but there were conditions and one of them was aimed at father's drinking. Stop or else.

Recently father went on a bender. Mother made calls for help and with daughter spent the night in a shelter. Daughter was again taken into custody and is again in a group home in a town out of the parent's reach. They don't have a car.

Mother says father is now under a restraining order to stay away from the home and she hasn't heard from him in three weeks. She says she didn't ask for the order. She has a copy. It shows the applicant was the Ottawa CAS.

"I don't know what good this does anybody. They won't let my daughter live with me and now they won't let my husband live with me." She says her daughter has called her and wants to come home, and is threatening to run again. Mother's greatest fear is the girl hitchhikes when she runs.

There's no doubt it is not in the child's best interests to live in a home where alcohol is being abused. But she says she'd rather live with that than away from her parents. It also puts a new question on the table. If we remove children from all homes where alcohol is abused, where are we going to store them? The current answer is expensive.

There are 5,400 beds for kids in group homes in Ontario. The average daily rate per bed is $182. Although the province's child-protection agencies place children in them, they are privately owned and operated. If all beds are filled, the cost in three years crosses the billion-dollar mark.

It would be less expensive to house this girl with a friend at the Château Laurier. With their combined $364 a day they could order from the room service menu, travel back and forth to school by taxi and have lots left over for cigarettes.

In the past there was an emphasis on keeping families together but that changed with the passing of Ontario's new Child and Family Services Act in 2000. Now the emphasis is on the "best interests" of the child.

There is nothing in the system to help families. Grandparents for example, who would be willing to take in a grandchild but need financial assistance can't compete financially with an approved group home. Since 1995 Ontario's bill for child protection has gone up by 139 per cent and is now more than $860 million a year.

In the same time period 1,700 more child-protection workers were hired. That's an increase of 77 per cent.

There's no doubt there are children in need of help and the 54 autonomous agencies in the province are trying their best. But have we become overzealous? Are we scooping up children who could, with a little support, stay in their families?

Dave Brown is the Citizen's senior editor. Send e-mail to dbrown@thecitizen.southam.ca Read previous columns at www.ottawacitizen.com .

For a year, this column has been reporting the exploits of a 13-year-old girl who keeps running from group homes that are trying to protect her from her parents. She's on the loose again.

The parents have not been found guilty of neglect or abuse, nor is that a factor in years of court cases they were tangled in as they fought to keep their daughter.

The main issue is the father is an alcoholic. He has not obeyed court suggestions/orders that he stop drinking.

The last time we visited the issue was in February. A court had given temporary permission for the runner to stay with her parents, but father went on a bender. Mother took daughter and spent the night at a shelter. Child protection workers applied for and got a court order banning the father from the home and, at the same time, the girl was again taken to a group home outside the city.

A few weeks ago, she knocked on her parents' door in one of the largest rent-to-income developments in the city and said she needed money to pay a taxi driver. She ran away, taking half the occupants of the group home with her. There were four in the cab, claiming they were from a group home for eight.

Since then, the runaways have either been living on the streets or are being hidden in the development. Her parents won't say. They say they've been threatened with arrest should it be found they are harbouring the runaways.

Denis Boivin, spokesman for the Ottawa Children's Aid Society, says there are currently 15 runaways, wards of the CAS, loose or "awol" in the city and they represent only one per cent of the youth in agency care.

The runner used to call this desk, but hasn't this time. However, a 15-year-old boy describing himself as the runaway's boyfriend has made contact. He, too, is a group-home resident but wants to live with his mother. His mother called to confirm that is also her wish.

There are complex issues at play here and I make no pretensions to having answers. What I have are questions. Has anybody looked at the huge sums of money kids like these generate for a system that also doesn't seem to have answers?

The average cost of a group home bed for kids like these is $182 a day. There are 5,400 such beds in Ontario -- privately owned and operated. That there are demands for even more beds is a good indicator these beds are filled. My calculator shows the cost of existing beds, occupied, crosses the billion-dollar mark in less than three years.

Add to that the cost of child protection workers, courts that can take as long as three years to cut the paperwork ordering the child to protective custody, and a growing herd of psychologists grazing on the periphery.

They do court-ordered assessments of parents and children. They provide parenting courses, anger-management courses, addictions counselling, and grief counselling, and address stress issues. The list continues to grow as more issues are identified/invented. (Stress in infants has recently entered the field.)

Our runner is now identified as a cutter. She self-mutilates. According to mother, the cutting stopped almost completely during the three months she was allowed to stay at home during the winter.

She describes her daughter as difficult, rebellious and given to rages. When angry, the girl is ruthlessly verbally abusive. When calm, she's a delight.

Having looked at the costs, let's look at the results. Would this out-of-control child be any more or less out of control had she been left in the care of her parents? Mother still wants her daughter at home and has been told that won't happen unless she takes yet another parenting course.

It used to be the emphasis in child protection was in keeping the child in the family. It was considered important to keep families together. That changed in 2000, with changes to Ontario's Child and Family Services Act that moved the emphasis to "the best interests of the child." What that may be is left up to individual agencies and courts making rulings on a case-by-case basis.

Results so far include demands for more family court judges, more child protection workers, more foster parents and more group home beds at $182 a pop. That's the cost of a good bed in a good hotel. A check of prices at the Château Laurier show it would be possible to put up two children in a suite at a combined $364 a day, allowing them to take taxis back and forth to school, order from the room service menu, and still have lots left over for treats.

The state as parent. Can we afford it?

The girl on the telephone was only 13, but a good communicator with a hard attitude and she is now in my files as unfinished business.

She's the second of three sisters to go AWL from the child protection system and make contact with this desk.

Since she and two sisters were taken into custody six years ago by child protection workers, their story has been frequently updated in my columns. Although I retire this week, I plan to keep tracking and writing about some cases, and this is one of them.

Her older sister ran from a group home when she turned 13 a year ago. She rode a bicycle to her parents' home. Apprehended again, she was placed in a group home farther from the parents', but she ran again and hitchhiked. Next time she called a taxi. This oldest child is a cutter. She has scars from many self-inflicted cuts and she's desperately unhappy. She wants to live with her parents.

Now No. 2 child has turned 13 and although not in contact with her sister, made the same decision to run back to her parents. She said she was living in a foster home and although the foster parents were trying their best, she was unco-operative and wanted to go to the place she still thinks of as home.

Like her sister before her, she was hidden by friends in the large rent-to-income development her parents live in. The parents were under threat of arrest for harbouring a runaway. Authorities re-apprehended sister No. 2 after a few weeks of what she considered freedom.

The parents believe the youngest child is doing better in foster care because her memory of her parents isn't strong. She was a pre-schooler.

The child protection system throughout the first world insists that secrecy is necessary to protect children from embarrassment. It also protects the processes from overview.

At the root of the problem is an alcoholic father. As reported in a column in December 2000, the decision was made by Judge Jennifer Blishen. She acknowledged in her judgment that there was strong love in the family. The children loved their parents and the parents loved their children. There was no abuse or neglect.

The ruling that made them Crown wards was based on a change to the preamble of the Child and Family Services Act in 2000. It used to say there should be an emphasis on keeping a family together. The revision said decisions should be made in the best interests of the child.

Judge Blishen ruled it was not in a child's best interests to live with an alcoholic father.

It took more than three years to reach that conclusion. During that time, the children were separated from their parents and each other. The older girls were in and out of many foster homes and schools. One was treated frequently at the Royal Ottawa Hospital. They were allowed to see their parents on a sliding scale of visits. Judge Blishen ruled that some visiting should continue even after wardship went to the Children's Aid Society. The parents call it torture. Not only was the system ruining the health of the parents, they said, but it was putting the children at risk.

Lawyer Lynn Keller represented the children and as reported in this column Dec. 13, 2000, after a two-week trial she pleaded with the court: "Let my clients go home." By then, her clients had been in custody for three years. The family had been subjected to many psychological tests and the parents had to take parenting courses.

Grandparents were involved in the early stages and tried to care for the girls while protection processes ground on. In their 70s, they found three active children too much to handle and asked for support. They hoped for financial and home help but received none.

Ontario taxpayers pay $182 a day for a bed in a children's group home. My calculator tells me we are paying $133,000 a year to keep the two oldest children. Then there's the cost of keeping the youngest in foster care.

Clearly it would be in the best interests of the taxpayers to keep children with family.

Is the new system working? The parents don't think so, but what do they know? They believe children should be happy.