Miss. judge bars couple from grandsons

A Lincoln County judge has thwarted an Ohio couple’s efforts to gain custody of their grandchildren who are in foster care, even as Mississippi has failed to fully comply with a federal lawsuit settlement stemming from its handling of children in state custody.

Frank and Martha Hartley Sr. of Barberton, Ohio, have been certified as fit to care for their two grandsons, ages 6 and 7 (soon to be 8). But Chancery Judge Edward Patten is moving forward with allowing a foster couple to adopt the boys.

“Our grandsons have been denied their right to live with family,” the Hartleys said in a letter they filed in the federal court case. “They have been denied their right to permanency and we have been denied our right of placement and custody. We are being denied our family.”

Martha Hartley is 48, and her husband is 47.

In February, Summit County Children’s Services in Akron, Ohio, completed a relative/foster home study on the Hartleys at the request of the Mississippi Department of Human Services’ Jackson County office and recommended the family for placement of the children. But Summit County Children Services said it could only make a recommendation and that the state of Mississippi would make the final placement decision.

On July 24, Summit County Children Services sent the Hartleys a letter that it had received paperwork from the state of Mississippi that terminates the family’s case. The agency that deals with child placement says that since Mississippi terminated the home study, the case with Summit County Children Services is now closed.

“The boys recognize us as family and they are everything to us,” the Hartleys said in their letter. “Imagine our heartbreak when on May 2, 2014, … a supervisor at the Department of Human Services of Mississippi, Jackson County, told us that we were not allowed to have any more contact with them because the Chancery Court of Lincoln County ordered it. She gave no details. No reasons, we couldn’t see our grandchildren. No opportunity to say goodbye.”

Martha Hartley said the boys had been in foster care for more than four years and were in seven different placements despite having family willing and able to accept them.

According to court records, the children were removed from their mother’s custody in August 2009 because of allegations of neglect and abuse. The children’s father, Frank Hartley Jr., was incarcerated in Florida at the time the case began for committing lewd and lascivious acts on a 14-year-old girl. His parents said he was 20 at the time and the crime occurred prior to him becoming a parent. He was an airman stationed at Elgin Air Force base when he was arrested in August 2006.

After the children were removed from their mother in 2009, the grandparents said they immediately called DHS, asking to be granted placement and/or custody, but the Jackson County Youth Court denied them contact with the boys.

The boys were placed with a foster couple in Lincoln County because of a shortage of foster homes in Jackson County. The Lincoln County couple later filed an adoption petition.

The Hartleys said they were informed June 2 that Patten had relieved DHS of custody of the boys and wasn’t considering placing the boys with birth relatives.

DHS policy says family placements are given priority over nonrelated settings.

The Jackson County Department of Human Services wouldn’t comment.

DHS spokeswoman Julia Bryan said, while the department has written policy, placement decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

Retired California Judge Leonard Edwards, who is working as a consultant, educator, and trainer, said he doesn’t know the facts of the case so it is difficult to make a case-specific comment. However, the law is clear that relatives are preferred placements per the Fostering Connections Act of 2008, he said.

Edwards served as a Superior Court Judge in Santa Clara County for 26 years and then for six years as judge-in-residence at the Center for Families, Children & the Courts, a division of the California Administrative Office of the Courts. As a judge he worked in the juvenile court for more than 20 years.

He said passage of the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008 declared a preference for placement with relatives. It mandated that relatives receive notice of child protection proceedings, gave them a voice in those proceedings and identified best practices for locating extended family members.

Edwards said research has shown that children in relative care tend to be just as safe as or safer than children placed in foster care. Relative placements provide more stability than placement with foster families, and if the children have to move, it is likely they will move from the home of one relative to another.

Also, siblings more often remain together in relative care and are more likely to visit one another even if they reside in separate relative homes.

In a letter the Ohio paternal grandparents wrote to the federal court in Mississippi, they said they have made every effort to gain custody of their grandchildren. The letter has been made a part of the record of the long-running federal case involving the care of children in state custody.

In 2004, the nonprofit Children’s Rights advocacy group filed a class action lawsuit, Olivia Y. v. Barbour, against then-Gov. Haley Barbour and DHS. The litigation exposed the agency’s failure to protect and care for children in the system. The complaints included that DHS was failing to investigate reports of mistreatment of children, opening cases and providing services in less than half the instances in which it confirmed abuse or neglect, burdening social workers with excessive caseloads and not providing training for caseworkers.

The state entered into a settlement agreement in 2008, agreeing to make widespread reforms. Last year, DHS signed a new agreement to speed up reform, but there are still complaints about the state not reaching benchmarks. A new settlement agreement is in the works.

“We wish to formally express our concerns with regards to the handling of the case involving our grandchildren,” the Hartleys said in the letter filed July 21, which a federal judge has placed under seal because he said it has identifying information about the children in foster care.

The attorney appointed to represent the children’s interests, Mark Randall Holmes of McComb, said the adoption case was private and he couldn’t discuss it.

Holmes, who wanted to know if the Hartleys contacted The Clarion-Ledger, said the grandparents aren’t parties to the adoption.

John and Lenita Watts of Lincoln County were foster parents to the children from December 2009 to October 2011.

Reached via phone, Lenita Watts, who along with her husband is seeking to adopt the children, said she couldn’t comment because it’s a pending adoption case. However, Watts said the grandparents may be disgruntled.

On June 20, 2011, the court changed the permanent plan from reunification with the birth mother to reunification with the father, who had gotten out of prison. It was after that the grandparents got a chance to see the boys. Their son, Frank Hartley Jr., now a resident of Daisytown, Pennsylvania, was awarded physical custody of his sons, but the foster parents filed a petition in Lincoln County where they lived to adopt the boys, according to records. The younger Hartley only had custody for one day. He wasn’t able to leave Mississippi with the boys.

The Jackson County Youth Court, which wanted to reunite the boys with their father, and Lincoln County Chancery Court sparred over jurisdiction in the case. The case ultimately went to the state Supreme Court on the jurisdiction issue, and the state high court ruled in 2011 that Lincoln County Chancery Court had jurisdiction because of the adoption case.

Patten signed the order preventing the children from leaving Mississippi, but the Hartleys were allowed to have contact with the boys and said they maintained a bonding relationship with them through quarterly visitations, weekly Skype sessions and telephone calls. However, the grandparents have now been cut off from contact with the boys. Their son is fighting the adoption of the boys by the foster parents. The younger Hartley has said in court papers that if he can’t get the children, his parents are ready and willing to take them.

“We have been going through hell,” Martha Hartley said in a phone interview. “It breaks my heart; we want our grandchildren.”

Contact Jimmie E. Gates at jgates@jackson.gannett.com or (601) 961-7212. Follow @jgatesnews on Twitter.