After 8 weeks, judge orders girl home

RITZVILLE, Wash. – An Adams County judge ordered that a 2-year-old girl with diabetes be returned to her parents on Monday, nearly eight weeks after the state took her away because the child’s blood-sugar level was elevated.

The parents, Magdaleno and Margarita Casillas, of Othello, Wash., will have to wait until Monday, however, to welcome Mireya home.

That’s because the child currently is in foster care in Grant County where she is receiving support services including visits by a nurse, according to state officials.

If she is sent home to Adams County, she would lose those services just days before her family moves to Warden, in Grant County, Assistant Attorney General Tobin Carlson said Tuesday at a shelter care hearing in Ritzville.

There have been “misunderstandings and difficulties,” Carlson, who represented Child Welfare Services, told Superior Court Judge Richard Miller.

David Hearrean, attorney for the Casillases, who are natives of Mexico, agreed with that assessment.

“If it were a white family, I think they would have had her home already,” Hearrean said.

The attorney also said that Mireya’s blood-sugar level has continued to spike dangerously high even since the state took her away. Data provided by the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed this.

The Casillases’ ordeal began Jan. 2, when they took their daughter, who had the flu, to the Moses Lake Pediatric Clinic.

Mireya was born with Down syndrome and congenital heart disease, among other health problems. Late last year, she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, as well.

At the clinic, she was found to have an extremely elevated blood-sugar level. Mireya was taken to the emergency room of the Moses Lake Hospital and later transferred to Sacred Heart Children’s Hospital in Spokane.

Dr. Marta Beaubien, of the Moses Lake clinic, reported the child’s elevated blood-sugar level and other problems with the child’s care to Child Protective Services. In a Jan. 5 letter, Beaubien also wrote that Margarita Casillas said she had not provided her daughter with insulin four days prior to the clinic visit. Casillas now denies this, citing her confusion when questioned by the doctor.

On Jan. 8, while at the hospital, Mireya was placed in shelter care, citing the parents’ “history of non-compliance with administering medication to their special needs child.”

At a hearing the following day, the family signed a shelter care order at which time a social worker told the parents their child would be returned within “three days and at the most two weeks,” Hearrean said.

Hearrean said the Casillases, who have four other children, were told the child would be returned when family services – including a visiting nurse, and a medical care plan endorsed by a treating physician – were in place. Hearrean said the state has provided these services, but with foster families, not with the girl’s own family.

“Instead of assigning a nurse to teach the family how to treat Mireya, they have shown three foster patents how to do it, all of them Anglo families,” said Carmella LeBlanc, of Spokane, an advocate for the Casillases.

Kate DuVall, a supervisor for Child Welfare Services, said it has taken this long to establish support services for the family.

On Tuesday, Miller ordered the girl returned to the family when they settle in their new home in Warden on Monday. Until that time, the Casillases will have two overnight visits with Mireya.