With recently diagnosed autism - a neurological disorder that impairs communication and social skills - Ronnie was withdrawn and could say only a few words. He could not identify familiar objects or point to body parts. Developmentally, according to a medical report, he was at the level of a 1-year-old.

Ronnie's behavior was hard to understand. His mother, who is cognitively limited, told a specialist at St. Christopher's Hospital that she was afraid to brush her son's teeth, according to the medical report. As a result, they were so decayed he had trouble eating. He threw tantrums; he was afraid of buses and cars. She hadn't sent him to school because she felt he wasn't ready.

In 2004, when Ronnie was 9, the Philadelphia Department of Human Services removed the boy from his home because of neglect. White, who was his autistic-support teacher at school, and her husband became his foster parents.

Three years later, Ronnie was thriving. The Whites applied for permanent custody.

But they quickly discovered that cases such as Ronnie's defy simple solutions.

Ronnie's case highlights the fundamental dilemma DHS faces in its effort to reform. What is in the best interests of neglected and abused children? Should the emphasis be on working with parents to preserve a family, or removing children from wobbly homes?

"DHS's first mandate is always to reunite children with their biological parents," said agency spokesman Frank Keel, who said he could not comment on the specific case. "All other options are secondary and are only considered when reunification with the parents is clearly not in the best interest of the children."

But that mandate and those options are the subject of passionate debate among child-welfare experts.

Ronnie's case is complicated by two other growing social concerns: How much should and can public-service agencies support cognitively disabled parents? And since about half of all abused and neglected children have some kind of disability, how can these kids get all the services they need?

The Whites and Ronnie's parents are not up on the latest public-policy wrangling. They haven't followed all the drama at DHS, which is under intense scrutiny since The Inquirer ran a series of articles last year about the agency's shortcomings.

But their lives are being buffeted by it.

Pat White said she understood how hard it must be for Ronnie's parents.

Since losing Ronnie, his birth parents have attended classes about autism. They've spent hours on buses to watch him play soccer and meet the Whites at a halfway point to take him home for weekend visits.

But White said she couldn't see how the couple could care for Ronnie's complex needs without an enormous amount of supervision and assistance. She said they cling to the hope that when he's 18, he'll move out and live independently.

"I'm afraid that if he goes back to them," she said, "he'll regress."

John J. Capaldi and Kathy Gomez of Community Legal Services, the attorneys for Ronnie's parents, declined to be interviewed or allow a reporter to speak to their clients.

"I am sure your readers can imagine how painful this separation has been for our client," Gomez wrote in an e-mail. "Everyone involved in this case has the best interests of the child in mind, but determining how the child's best interests are served is a difficult and complicated matter."

Representatives from Children's Choice, the Christian, nonprofit foster-care agency that manages Ronnie's case, also declined to be interviewed.

The Inquirer is withholding the boy's full name and those of his birth parents. Frank Cervone, executive director of Philadelphia's Support Center for Child Advocates, said that because of state and federal laws regarding confidentiality, the foster parents could jeopardize their efforts to maintain custody if they allowed a child to be identified.