Lehigh County’s fiscal watchdog says the guardian ad litem program, which assigns overseers to protect children in custody and dependency cases, needs better standards to assure it’s working fairly and effectively. At a video briefing Monday sponsored by Dads Resource Center — a Pennsylvania group that advocates for the rights of fathers in custody matters — Controller Mark Pinsley gave an overview of his review of the county system, under which judges appoint attorneys to serve as guardians. By and large, the problems Pinsley said he found relate to transparency and accountability. Many parents misunderstand the role of the guardian, he said, while guardians themselves sometimes fail to make clear what course of action they’re following as they handle cases. The guardian system works differently among states. In Pennsylvania, judges appoint them from a pool of attorneys or mental health professionals who agree to investigate the circumstances of custody, dependency and adoption cases, and make recommendations intended to be in the best interest of the child — or, in some cases, incapacitated adults. After conducting a survey of guardians and examining available documents, Pinsley made four main observations: - Guardian appointments and compensation practices in Lehigh County are decentralized and inconsistently documented. - There is no external oversight body to evaluate guardian performance, nor is there a transparent process for families to raise concerns. - Invoices frequently lack detail that would show whether guardians engage with children as contractually required. (Pinsley noted that guardians may submit more detailed invoices to judges, but the county’s judges didn’t take part in his survey). - Stakeholders sometimes believe guardians are closely aligned with Children and Youth Services or the court, raising ethical concerns — even if those concerns are driven more by perception than verifiable bias. An independent oversight board could alleviate that problem. “Our goal is not to have these perceptions,” Pinsley said. “We need parents to know we’re acting in the best interest of the child. Families tend to lose faith in the system and that’s not good for anyone.” Compensation may be a significant factor in how well guardians perform, he noted. In Lehigh County, for example, guardians are paid $100 an hour, far less than what most attorneys make in their regular practice. Unwilling to sacrifice those more lucrative hours, some attorneys cut corners on guardian work, Pinsley said: neglecting to do home visits and conduct in-person interviews with teachers, doctors, therapists, parents and the children themselves. In talking to guardians, “it was the ones that were willing travel for the children complaining about ones who were not willing to travel,” Pinsley said. “Their feeling was, if you’re not willing to do the work, don’t be a [guardian].” Pinsley recommended that Pennsylvania adopt a system similar to those in Florida, Maine and Colorado, all of which have independent oversight boards, formal performance evaluations and public reporting on guardian activities. Ideally, the report says, it should be clear how much time guardians spend per case, how well they interact with children and whether their recommendations result in good outcomes. Failing to have a firm handle on those matters “is not merely a documentation problem. It is a service delivery failure.” Robert Garza, a parental rights advocate from Texas, said such reforms are the best way to ensure the system overseeing the fraught realm of child custody works properly. “I spent about $700,000 being in my children’s lives,” he said, recounting his own protracted custody battle. “Why should you have to spend $700,000 just to show you’re a fit parent?” In the scope of its criticisms, Pinsley’s report is a far cry from his headline-making 2023 investigation, “The Cost of Misdiagnosis,” which alleged widespread misdiagnosis of child abuse that resulted in families being torn apart. However, he said, the guardian report was inspired partly by that one. “A lot of the parents I dealt with during that did complain to me,” he said. “After they complained, I got other complaints. The parents talk to each other.” Morning Call reporter Daniel Patrick Sheehan can be reached at 610-820-6598 or [email protected].