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Court of Appeal:
Court Wrongly Ended Parental Rights of Texas Mother
Majority Says Trial Judge Improperly Blamed Indigent Parent for Not Enrolling in Local Therapy for Which California’s Riverside County Declined to Pay; Dissenter Asserts Legal Authority Is Absent
By Kimber Cooley, associate editor
A divided panel of Div. Two of the Fourth District Court of Appeal held Friday that a trial judge erred in terminating reunification plans for an out-of-state mother, whose son had been declared a ward of the Riverside Superior Court after his guardian could no longer care for him, due to her failure to obtain local services in Texas for which she did not have the means to pay.
This, the appeals court said, placed her in a “catch-22” situation by blaming her for not getting help that Riverside County failed to provide.
At issue is whether the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services (“DPSS”) met its burden under Welfare and Institutions Code §366.22(a)(3) which specifies that, before a judge orders that reunification efforts between a parent and child be terminated, “the court shall determine by clear and convincing evidence whether reasonable services have been offered or provided to the parent or legal guardian.”
In an unpublished opinion, written by Manuel A. Ramirez and joined in by Justice Richard T. Fields, the court declared:
“Here, the court’s reasonable services finding found Mother noncompliant with a service plan that did not address or account for her out-of-state residence. Despite the court’s musings at the hearing about whether the Department should be required to provide reasonable services even if a parent lived in a foreign country, the fact remains that the Department made no efforts to provide a comparable free service that was accessible and available to the Mother.”
Dissenting, Justice Frank J. Menetrez disagreed with an assertion that the county must pay for out-of-state services, saying that there is no legal authority to support such a proposition.
Dependency Petition
After the minor’s temporary guardian said that he could no longer care for the teenager after the child attacked him, a dependency petition was filed by the DPSS. The minor’s mother, identified in the opinion as “Amy H.,” was living out of state at the time.
Amy H. had a prior child welfare referral history due to purported drug use and other allegations. The minor, referred to as “C.V.,” expressed to social workers that he desired to move in with his mother, and Riverside Superior Court Judge Sean P. Crandell ordered that reunification services be provided to Amy H.
She was directed to participate in counseling, parenting education, and substance abuse services.
Because she lived out of state, Riverside County social workers told Amy H. that it was her job to enroll in required therapies in Texas even though she repeatedly informed them that she could not afford to pay. The county told her she might qualify for reimbursement, an offer she said was of no help because she did not have the funds to pay upfront.
The only service provided by DPSS consisted of an online parenting class, which she completed.
Efforts to establish supervision under the Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children (“ICPC”)—a legal framework that governs the placement of children across state lines—failed after Texas determined that she had failed to make progress on a plan of reunification.
At a status hearing held on May 8 of last year, a county social worker acknowledged that Amy H. had consistently indicated that she could not participate in services in Texas as she did not have insurance coverage or cash to pay for them. However, Crandall found that reasonable services had been provided and the mother had failed to make progress on a treatment plan.
Reasonable Services
Ramirez said that case law has established that such “reasonable services” require that a supervising agency has identified the problems leading to the loss of custody, offered programs designed to remedy those issues, and made reasonable efforts to assist the parents in areas where compliance proved difficult.
Applying that standard, he opined:
“Mother’s main obstacle to reunification was her residence out-of-state since before the referral, and her inability to pay for services out of-pocket, but the Department still referred Mother to programs within California (aside from the virtual parenting class, which Mother completed) and made no effort to identify program resources in Texas.”
Saying that the county’s “repeated references in reports regarding its advice that Mother pay out-of-pocket for services in hopes of later reimbursement was an illusory service,” the judge wrote:
“[A]lthough the…court had ordered the Department to initiate an ICPC to obtain cooperation from…the State of Texas, the Department did not timely reach out to Texas. By the time the social worker initiated the contact, the passage of time without any services available to Mother left her in a catch-22 situation: Texas would not participate in providing services because Mother had not made progress in her plan, but Mother could not make progress in her plan due to her inability to pay for services.”
Citing Welfare and Institutions Code §362.8, which provides that “the parent…shall not be considered to be noncompliant with the court-ordered case plan when the court finds that the parent or guardian is unable to pay for a service…and the social worker did not provide a comparable free service that was accessible and available to the parent or guardian to comply with the case plan,” Ramirez remarked:
“[W]e note that the presenting problem that led to this dependency was Minor’s oppositional and physically aggressive behavior towards his caretaker, which continued throughout the dependency resulting in several failed placements and the administration of psychotropic medication. Mother was not offered any services in how to deal with such a child….
“For this reason, the finding that reasonable services were provided was not supported by clear and convincing evidence, requiring reversal of the reasonable services finding, and Mother is entitled to an additional six months of services.”
Menetrez’s View
Menetrez wrote:
“The only argument that appellant Amy H….raises concerning reasonable services is that the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services (DPSS) should have paid for Mother’s services in Texas. Mother’s argument fails for at least three reasons. First, the legal authorities cited by Mother do not establish that DPSS has an obligation to pay for out-of-state services, and I am not aware of any authority for that proposition.”
He continued:
“Second, DPSS offered to pay for Mother’s services by reimbursement. That was reasonable, and the record contains no evidence that it was even possible for DPSS to pay for Mother’s services in Texas in any other way. Third, Mother herself claimed that (1) she made too much money to qualify for the services available in her area, but (2) she was saving her money to buy a car.”
Under those circumstances, he argued:
“DPSS had no obligation to pay for Mother’s services in order to enable her to devote her earnings to buying a car, and DPSS’s failure to do that does not make DPSS’s services unreasonable. Because Mother’s only argument on the reasonable services issue lacks merit, I would affirm the juvenile court’s termination of Mother’s reunification services.”
The case is In re C.V., E083906.
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