Italian court gives ‘off-grid’ Australian mother more access to three children

London: An Italian court has granted an Australian mother a chance to rejoin her three children after they were removed from the family’s rustic home last November over health fears.

The decision allows Catherine Birmingham and her British partner, Nathan Trevallion, to gain access to their children in a gradual process under the supervision of social services staff.

But the ruling by the Juvenile Court in L’Aquila, in central Italy east of Rome, will keep the children in a residential care facility until authorities believe it is safe to reunite the family in their own home.

Birmingham told the Nine Network earlier this year that the Italian authorities had been wrong to remove the children, declaring she would keep fighting to take them home.

“What I’m fighting is the very, very, very ignorant belief that what we have done to our children was wrong,” Birmingham said.

The couple were raising the children, an eight-year-old girl and two six-year-old twin boys, in woods near the town of Palmoli in the central region of Abruzzo.

The Italian social services expressed concern at the fact that the off-grid home had no toilet, no electricity and no running water. They also claimed the children were kept isolated and were not being properly homeschooled.

The removal of the children made headlines in November as Italian politicians and observers debated whether the “family in the woods” should be allowed to continue their off-grid lifestyle.

On Tuesday, the Juvenile Court ‌approved a staged process under the supervision of social services that could ultimately allow the children to leave residential care.

“The ruling partially revises previous court decisions and sets out ​a gradual reunification process, allowing the children to return home for daytime visits immediately ​and, from October, for weekend overnight stays with their family,” said lawyer Simone Pillon, who acts for the family.

The children were taken into care in November after being poisoned by mushrooms, something the parents described as an accident.

Birmingham was allowed to stay in the residential care facility, seeing the children for set periods, until a court ruled in March that she should be removed because of tensions with the staff.

In April, the family lost a claim in the Juvenile Court seeking to regain access to the children.

The latest decision requires social services to ​assess the children’s reintegration with their parents before any permanent reunification can take place.