Panel clears child-welfare bill

Tears, along with passionate testimony from the boy's father, helped secure committee approval Monday night of yet another "Parker Jensen" bill — legislation aimed at changing the state's child-welfare system.

And it didn't hurt that Parker, with his 13-year-old infectious smile, sat at the public testimony table as his dad gave a detailed narrative of the family's controversial encounter with the "system" last summer.

All 10 members of the House Political Subdivisions Committee listened intently to the blow-by-blow account by Daren Jensen of how the system pays undue deference to entrenched medical opinions and puts families "behind the eight ball" because it relies so heavily on state authorities.

"We were being pushed off a cliff and not given the time to have our questions answered," Daren Jensen said.

Later, fighting back tears, the father told the committee, "You don't have any idea of the heartache it is to take your son . . . and explain to him that he is going to die. It is the most difficult thing I have ever done."

Parker has lived on another 16 months and — according to his family — is free from the cancer that precipitated the state trying to take him in a virulent custody battle that made national headlines. The state eventually backed off, but not before setting up a second round of public fights on parental rights.

It is because of those mistakes, Jensen said, that the committee needed to approve HB140, sponsored by Rep. LaVar Christensen, R-Sandy, which seeks a shift to families' rights in the child-welfare system.

Specifically, it calls for an optional appointment of someone from the state's Guardian Ad Litem's Office to represent the child's interests and allows parents to select that guardian ad litem.

The bill has critics wondering about the effectiveness of the system in safeguarding the rights of a child when the parent gets to make the selection — a selection that could tilt the balance back toward the parents.

Kristen Brewer, who heads the Guardian Ad Litem's Office, said often what a child wants is not what is best for the child.

"The wishes of the minor may not represent the best wishes at all," she said. "We have a lot of cases where of course the child wants to come home, even when they have been horribly, sexually abused."