By Debra Jasper
Enquirer Columbus Bureau

COLUMBUS - Cindy Danley told lawmakers in emotional testimony Tuesday that no Ohio parent should have to go through the ordeal she experienced when she had to give up her mentally ill son to get him treatment.

The Oxford mother said mental health officials first told her in 2001 that she might have to trade custody for care if she wanted the government to pay to send her son to a psychiatric center. She refused at first, but relented after he was hospitalized five times and grew increasingly violent.

Danley said she turned to Butler County officials only because she feared her son, who is now 8 years old, might hurt her other children. "Aaron is not yet old enough to understand the pain I felt when I gave him up...." she told members of the Senate Finance Committee. "I begged for help. I felt like I was choosing which son to keep."

She said Butler County officials took custody and sent the boy to a center in Indiana, where he improved and eventually moved back home. But he lives in fear that she'll give him away again.

"He asked me, 'Am I going to be a ward of the state again, mommy?' " Danley said. "Imagine your child saying that to you."

Danley and several other parents, county officials and advocates testified Tuesday as part of ongoing committee hearings on a bill proposed by Sen. John Carey, R. Wellston. The bill would let parents keep the legal rights to their children even if county welfare agencies agree to pay for the children to go to 24-hour psychiatric centers.

Lawmakers started hearings on the bill in March, a week after a series in the Cincinnati Enquirer revealed that as many as 1,800 families have been forced to give up all legal rights to their children in the past three years to get the government to pay for treatment.

At least 38 of Ohio's 88 counties acknowledge taking custody of children whose families have no other way to cover treatment bills that range from $160 to $1,000 a day. Parents who give up custody lose all say over where their children are sent, how long they stay or what kind of medication they are given.

The Enquirer also found that despite promising to help, some counties sent children to centers were they were molested, improperly drugged, abused or forced to live in wretched conditions.

Carey said his bill would end the practice of trading custody-for-care by letting parents and counties sign voluntary placement agreements. The contracts would let parents retain custody but still get help and allow counties to tap federal funds to help cover treatment costs even without custody, he said.

Another parent, Octavia Gray, told lawmakers that Hamilton County officials also told her to give up custody of her son, Raphael, now 14, to get him treatment. But she refused because she didn't want him to think she didn't love him anymore.

"I was his mother and the one person he has always depending on," she said. "Why would I relinquish custody of my son who has severe mental health problems to total strangers that do not know him, and when I will have no say about his overall care?"

Gray and Danley urged lawmakers to do more to help parents keep their children. "It is my wish that after you make your decisions," Danley said, "that no one else will stand in my shoes."

Several lawmakers told the parents they had a better understanding of the problems parents face in Ohio's mental health system. "It's overwhelming to realize we don't have the right mental health services available to people in this state," said Sen. Eric Fingerhut, D-Cleveland.

Not everyone who testified Tuesday supported the bill, however. Tom Roeland, chairman of the legislative committee for the Public Children Services Association of Ohio, said he fears the measure would increase costs because more parents would ask counties to pay to send their kids into treatment.

Roeland, who is also executive director of the Wayne County Children Services Board, said child welfare systems are already overloaded caring for abused and neglected youth and are "financially on the brink of collapse."

As a result, he told lawmakers, "Any solution you consider is no real or meaningful solution without new, significant state funding. (Without it) you may just put even greater numbers of abused and neglected children at even greater risk by more quickly exhausting county resources."

E-mail djasper@enquirer.com