Unless I misunderstand your post, this decision sounds like a disaster for the children. If your client exhausts her income buying one bus ticket every two weeks, I have to wonder how she is going to support and take care of 5 children as a single parent. Her income and whatever help is available from our frayed safety net would seem to assure that the children are raised in impoverished circumstances with all the disadvantages that implies.

to travel to see the kids without taking time off from work. She can travel Friday night (10:30 pm) and arrive Saturday morning to see the kids.

To allay your concerns, our client completed two vocational programs, one rudimentary and the other, advanced, in electrocardiology technology, with certifications. Now that she has the kids and the visits will eventually become a permanent home for all of them, her mother and friends can help look after the kids while she works -- not at McDonalds, but likely at a military/naval hospital in Norfolk where she can earn a decent salary and benefits, not to mention job security.

The children will not be impoverished in any case as her mother will pitch in some money to help in the beginning.

Still, I see them going from a secure situation to a more uncertain future and a situation in which their welfare largely depends on a job their mother does not yet have.

I know that part of your job is to make a plausible case for the competence of the mother. It sounds to me that there is a strong bias in the court system to keep the children with the birth mother rather than a foster parent. You said that "the court decided there was no evidence of abuse or harm by our client." Is that the primary standard used to decide these cases? That criterion strikes me as inferior to doing what is best for the children.

I hope that, in fact, this turns out to be best for the children.

You don't recognize how much progress this woman made.

She was nearly non-responsive, disheveled, and catatonic when she first came to us. We helped her find proper medical and psychological assistance. She went home to her parents to heal. She only had the goal of getting her children back to motivate her to keep trying despite the odds against us. The Division was working against her. Her estranged (then ex) husband was working against her. She knew she had to change and she did.

We advised her every step of the way how daunting it would be to raise five children as a single mother without alimony and/or child support. As things stand right now, our client has a good chance of making more money than I do.

The kids are coming home to their mother -- and grandmother, their step-grandfather, their step-aunt, and a lot of friends and neighbors in their community.

And to answer your other question, there are four issues to be resolved in a termination of parental rights: 1) Has the "harm" (abuse/neglect) been removed? 2) Did the parent cause the harm or will continue to harm the child(ren)? 3) Did the Division make "reasonable efforts" to reunify the children with their parents? and 4) Would returning the child(ren) to the parents do more harm than allowing them to stay with the foster parents? These questions overlap and are really components of a large whole. They all boil down to the best interests of the child coupled with a parent's constitutional and fundamental right to parent his/her own child.

My concerns are clearly covered by "4) Would returning the child(ren) to the parents do more harm than allowing them to stay with the foster parents?" Your involvement was obviously much deeper than just being an advocate in a custody case. Congratulations on a job well done.

We "won", that is, we got the legal and physical custody of all the five children transferred from the Division of Youth and Family Services back to my client, their mother.

The children were removed almost 3-1/2 years ago on baseless reasons and the judge made that finding.

The foster parents wanted to adopt all the kids (and receive a sizable federal stipend from the federal government for each child adopted) and interfered every way possible to make sure the children didn't want to return to their mother. The Division didn't provide meaningful services to effect reunification, including appropriate reunification therapy even when it was court ordered.

The children were released directly to our client at court. The judge didn't allow the foster parents to say goodbye to the kids as he found he couldn't trust them with the children any further. Our client didn't have a vehicle and didn't have the money to transport herself and the children back to Virginia Beach where she lives. My colleague and I rented a Chevy Suburban and drove them home that day/night.