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May 21, 2005. 01:00 AM
Parents faced with a terrible choice
To help disabled children, parents must lose custody
Law on books for `decades,' says Ontario official
KERRY GILLESPIE
QUEEN'S PARK BUREAU
No parent should have to give up custody of a severely disabled child to get the child the help he or she
needs, the province says.
So why, on Sept. 18, will 10-year-old Ryan Frotten become a ward of the state?
Ryan, who has severe mental health problems, needs to be in a group home where he can get constant care
and supervision. The only way to get him into one, his parents were told, was to turn him over to the
Children's Aid Society (CAS).
"We felt we had to do it," says Ryan's stepmother, Tracey Hite.
"We couldn't take him home, we couldn't keep him in school, he was being suspended every other day ... he
was hurting the other kids," says Hite, who lives with Ryan's dad, Mark Frotten, in Mississauga.
They're desperately hoping something will happen before Sept. 18 when Ryan — who has parents who love
and want to raise him — automatically becomes a permanent ward of the state until he turns 18. Help may be
coming.
Late last month, Ontario's ombudsman, André Marin, launched an investigation into what he called the
"simply unacceptable" practice of parents having to give up custody to get their kids help.
He started with six cases. The number quickly ballooned and, say people involved in this issue, there are
hundreds of Ontario families facing the prospect of turning their severely disabled kids over to the CAS.
Marin gave Children and Youth Services Minister Marie Bountrogianni his interim report earlier this month.
His final report will be tabled in the Legislature and made public on Thursday.
It will be a must read for the Frotten family and other parents like Jeanette Niebler and Cynthia Cameron.
Niebler, a Stratford single mom, put her severely autistic 9-year-old son, Dylan, into the care of the CAS — so
he could get round-the-clock care in a group home — after he chewed the skin off his fingers one weekend.
Cameron, of London, put 14-year-old Jesse, who has a brain injury and is severely autistic, into temporary
custody of the CAS after he suffered a series of concussions from head butting objects and people.
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`No family will be forced to give up their children to access special-needs supports'
Then-premier Mike Harris, 2001
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As things stand now, Cameron has until August to decide whether to permanently give up custody to keep
Jesse in the group home where he's getting the supervision and help he needs.
Ryan Frotten's problems began when he was 2. Over the years, he has been diagnosed with a myriad of
mental health syndromes and disorders.
By Grade 1, his parents had trouble keeping him in school; by age 7, his thoughts were so dark he was
seeing a psychiatrist weekly. Then came the aggressive behaviour — kicking and biting — especially toward
his parents.
"He felt his parents should be able to help him and we couldn't," Hite says.
In 2003, to get him into the Bayfield residential treatment facility for children in Prince Edward County, they
put him in the temporary care of the CAS. He's improving at Bayfield, but to keep him there the family will
have to give up custody permanently in September, or pay $350 a day, which it can't afford, Hite says.
These aren't the choices families should have to make, Bountrogianni says.
"No family in this province, in this day and age, should have to consider giving up their children to get the
help they need," Bountrogianni recently told the Legislature.
She isn't the first to have made such a statement.
"No family will be forced to give up their children to access special-needs supports," then-premier Mike
Harris said in the Legislature in 2001 after publicity about a Huntsville woman who was about to lose custody
of her child.
But it was under Harris, in 1997, that the government stopped issuing the "special-needs agreements" that
gave parents access to the group homes and specialized services their children needed without losing
custody.
So, what is the rationale behind making parents give up custody to get help?
Bountrogianni's communications adviser, Andrew Weir, says the ministry isn't sure how it started.
"It's been in the legislation for decades," he says. "I can't account for why it was written in the first place."
But the basic problem, he says, is that there are more people who need services than there are services.
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`We couldn't take him home, we couldn't keep him in school'
Tracey Hite
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That means parents whose severely disabled children have two choices.
They can try to manage on their own while waiting for the services to become available or they can
"abandon" their child to a children's aid society.
Because the CAS is bound by law to find the necessary services for children in its care, it has to expand
treatment facilities or programs to make room.
Douglas Elliott, a lawyer in a $500-million, class-action lawsuit against the province over the issue, says it
was likely an attempt to save money.
"Sometimes, government accounting is more form than substance," Elliott says. "You appear to be
eliminating a program, cutting (special-needs agreements), but, in fact, the money is just being shifted over
to another category."
The government winds up paying the same for the services no matter whose custody the child is in, he says.
Anne Larcade, lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, is more cynical.
"I ask the question: Did they really think that if we had to abandon our children or give up custody they
would have to help less children because we wouldn't do that?"
Permanently giving up custody means parents lose a say in where their kids are treated and what
medications they get.
Larcade managed to keep custody of her severely disabled 15-year-old son, Alexandre, after getting the
attention of then-premier Harris, but some other families in the lawsuit have not been able to do so.
The families in the lawsuit, originally filed in 2002, want the government to start signing special-needs
agreements again.
Bountrogianni says making one-off agreements with individual families isn't the answer and a better solution
is to expand the services available to everyone. This week, she gave the ombudsman her response to his
investigation, and said she has a solution.
"My solution will be reported very soon and it will be implemented very soon," Bountrogianni said.
Asked when the days of parents being forced to give up custody of their kids to the CAS will be over, she
replied: "They will be soon."
With files from Rob Ferguson
Additional articles by Kerry Gillespie