Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Lives on Layaway

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Children's return delayed

Angela Edwards, whose battles with Allegheny County Children and Youth Services were described in a story yesterday, did not get her two youngest children back from foster care.

She began sobbing when she went to court yesterday and learned the judge had postponed the hearing for a week. Then she was sick at her stomach all afternoon.

"I said, ‘No, it can't happen.' I started crying. I said they can't do this to me," she said later.

Allegheny County Children and Youth Services, which had asked a judge in April to take the children from Edwards because her household was chaotic, had found an apartment where she could stay with them and was to recommend that the judge return the children to Edwards yesterday. But the hearing was delayed because Common Pleas Judge Cheryl Allen Craig wanted to leave court at 1 p.m. to attend a judicial conference in Harrisburg.


	The following CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION appeared on May 16, 1998: Because of a scheduling conflict, Common Pleas Judge Cheryl Allen Craig delayed some already scheduled hearings Wednesday, including one for Angela Edwards, whose two youngest children had been placed in foster care. However, Craig did offer to conduct a brief hearing for Edwards if Allegheny County Children and Youth Services planned to recommend the return of her children. But no one told Edwards of the offer. She left juvenile court after reading on the court schedule that her hearing had been delayed and her children remained in foster care. A story Thursday did not mention the offer for the brief hearing.