A Nova Scotia judge has dismissed the province’s request to take a 20-month-old girl into permanent custody, ruling that the child’s safety won’t be jeopardized by staying with hertroubled family.
The decision only identifies
the toddler as D, her mother as C and her father as S.
“There is a difference between parents who are poor, and poor parents. Ms. C and Mr. S are parents who are poor,” Justice Elizabeth Jollimore said in a written decision released Wednesday.
The minister of community services brought the application to the Supreme Court of Nova
Scotia’s family division late last year.
“The minister argues that they are poor parents and that their 20-month-old daughter, D, should be in the minister’s permanent care and custody. The minister says there is substantial risk of D’s physical or emotional harm or neglect. The parents dispute this,”
ollimore said.
The parents began their relationship in the summer of 2015, when she was 18 and he was 22. A few weeks into the liaison, C learned she was pregnant. S is not the little girl’s biological father, though he has always acted as the child’s dad.
Now 21, D’s mother has experienced mental health difficulties since she was a teen. Now in his mid-20s, S recently found a new job, but he has mental troubles of his own.
When their daughter was born, they were living with extended family in a four-bedroom home occupied by 10 people.
“Crowded into this home and without enough money, there was tension. D’s parents fought,” Jollimore said.
On March 29, 2016 “the adults were arguing about the state of the house” when it became physical and S called the police. Officers took C into custody briefly for breaching the peace.
S reported the incident to Community Services the next day. But the agency closed the file after determining the “major presenting problem of physical harm is unsubstantiated” and that the risk had been mitigated because the couple had moved out.
In the following couple of months, S called police two more times, once when “he restrained Ms. C from committing suicide by throwing herself into traffic, and in May when Ms. C and Mr. S got into an argument.”
The minister of community services took their daughter into custody in early June of 2016.
The couple had a son in mid-December of that same year. He’s now living with his grandparents.
“D is twenty months old. She is bi-racial. She has been in only one foster placement since coming into care. She is not in a culturally appropriate foster placement and the minister has never sought a culturally appropriate foster placement for her,” Jollimore said.
The girl is described in court documents as healthy and “very happy.”
Her father, S, has post-traumatic stress disorder from witnessing the suicide of a longtime friend in March 2016.
But the judge concluded that neither of the parents’ mental health puts their daughter at risk.
“The minister said the parents’ relationship is unstable. This court’s docket is populated by broken family relationships,” Jollimore said.
“The end of a family does not necessitate the minister’s involvement. The minister must point to something more.”
The couple plan to parent D together.
“The parents cannot guarantee whether their relationship will endure,” Jollimore said. “I don’t believe that is necessary. The parents have developed communication skills through their counselling which can assist them if they choose to separate. They are aware of the need to isolate D from arguments and have taken steps to do so when needed.”
According to the judge: “It’s in the context of the parents’ accommodations that their poverty is conflated with being poor parents.”
They’ve lived in several places around Halifax, including one where there was nearby criminal activity.
“The minister suggests the parents are failing for living in these homes in the first place,” said the judge. “With limited means, the parents have limited choices.”
They’ve now found a place in Dartmouth, but it’s described in court documents as a “lower income area” where there is “reported criminal activity,” and the methadone bus stops outside their building.
Despite this, their homes “have been tidy and clean” when a family support worker visits, said the judge.
“The parents cannot be faulted for their inability to afford homes in better neighbourhoods,” Jollimore said.
The little girl “is not in need of protective services,” the judge concluded.
“The parents are aware of their daughter’s needs and seek services and assistance to meet her needs, and to protect her from the challenges posed by their mental health conditions and their poverty,” Jollimore said.
