Case Title: IN THE MATTER OF THE PARENTAL RIGHTS TO D.H., A.P., AND J.K.: K.H. V. WYOMING DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY SERVICES

Citation: 

Docket Number: C-07-2

State: wyoming

Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

Date: 2007-12-12T00:00:00Z

Document:
IN THE MATTER OF THE PARENTAL RIGHTS TO D.H., A.P., AND J.K.: K.H. V. WYOMING DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY SERVICES2007 WY 196173 P.3d 365Case Number: C-07-2Decided: 12/12/2007
OCTOBER 
TERM, A.D. 2007

 
 
IN THE MATTER OF 
THE PARENTAL RIGHTS TO D.H., A.P., AND J.K.:

 
 
K.H.,

 
 
Appellant

(Respondent)

 
 
v.

 
 
WYOMING 
DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY SERVICES,

 
 
Appellee

(Petitioner).

 
 
Appeal 
from the DistrictCourtofPlatteCounty

The 
Honorable Keith G. Kautz, Judge

 
 
Representing 
Appellant:

Matthew F.G. Castano, Brown & 
Hiser, LLC, Laramie, 
Wyoming.

 
 
Representing 
Appellee:

Patrick J. Crank, Attorney General; 
Robin Sessions Cooley, Deputy Attorney General; Dan S. Wilde, Senior Assistant 
Attorney General; Stacey L. Obrecht, Assistant Attorney General.  Argument by Ms. 
Obrecht.

 
 
Guardian Ad 
Litem:

Eric Eugene Jones, Wheatland, Wyoming.

 
 
Before VOIGT, C.J., and GOLDEN, 
HILL, KITE, and BURKE, JJ.

 
 
BURKE, 
Justice.

 
 

[¶1]           
Appellant 
KH (Mother) appeals the district court's decision terminating her parental 
rights.  We 
affirm.

 

 
 

[¶2]           
Mother 
presents two issues, but we find her first to be 
dispositive:

Whether the [d]istrict [c]ourt erred 
[by] terminating the parental rights of Mother when the Department of Family 
Services had failed to comply with its own written policy of attempting to place 
children with relatives prior to placing them in non-relative foster 
care.

 

 
 

[¶3]           
Mother 
has three children: JK, born in 1995, AP, born in 1996, and DH, born in 
1999.  Each child has a different 
father.  In January 2006, the 
Department of Family Services (DFS) initiated this action to terminate the 
parental rights of Mother and the three fathers to the children.  One father, KH's husband at the time, 
consented to the termination of his parental rights.  The other two fathers did not respond to 
the petition, and the district court terminated their parental rights.  Mother contested the petition and a 
trial was held on August 9, 2006.  
Following the trial, the district court found that Mother's parental 
rights should be terminated pursuant to Wyo. Stat. Ann. §§ 14-2-309(a)(iii) and 
(a)(v) (LexisNexis 2007).

 
 

[¶4]           
The 
evidence at trial established that DFS had numerous contacts with Mother prior 
to August 2004.  Despite DFS 
involvement, the children remained in the custody of Mother and her current 
husband, who was DH's father.  The 
family resided in Cheyenne at the time.  On August 21, 2004, Mother and Husband 
were arrested and incarcerated in PlatteCounty.  In response, DFS took custody of the 
children and initiated a neglect proceeding in Laramie County Juvenile Court 
pursuant to Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 14-3-412.  
The case was eventually transferred to PlatteCounty.  In conjunction with the neglect 
proceedings, DFS developed a case plan to facilitate family reunification and to 
create a family environment that would be in the best interests of the 
children.  The case plan, in general 
terms, required Mother and Husband to attend parenting classes and to obtain 
counseling to address domestic violence and substance abuse issues.  
The plan required Mother and Husband to obtain employment and to secure safe and 
suitable housing for the children.  
The plan provided Mother and Husband with the opportunity for regular 
visitation with the children. They both consented to the 
plan.

 
 

[¶5]           
Initially, Mother made little effort 
to comply with the plan.  She stepped up her efforts when Husband was again 
arrested, but those efforts were sporadic and short-lived.  Mother attended some parenting classes 
but did not complete the program.  
She sought and obtained counseling related to the domestic violence and 
substance abuse issues but terminated counseling of her own volition.  She 
did not obtain employment until it was made a condition of her probation in 
March 2005.  The employment she did 
obtain was part-time and she did not hold any job for 
long.

 
 

[¶6]           
Even 
though Mother took some steps that her case plan required, DFS observed that 
Mother had not developed the capability to parent her children.  This became apparent during her visits 
with the children.  The visits were 
first supervised, and later unsupervised but periodically monitored.  While the children were reasonably well 
behaved in their foster homes, they acted quite differently as Mother's visits 
approached and during the visits.  
The two younger children cried and protested that they did not want to 
visit Mother.  Their behavior 
worsened during the visits.  The 
caseworker described the children "lighting matches, slamming doors that knocked 
the pictures off the wall and then [the pictures] broke, and [AP] got cut."  After one day into an extended 
Thanksgiving visit in 2005, the caseworker reported, Mother's home "was pretty 
much trashed."  During the Christmas 
holiday visit that same year, the DFS worker observed that the oldest child was 
nailing blankets to the beds, and that "[t]he children fought continually over 
games, over food, over everything."  
Mother was unable to manage this behavior, and requested assistance from 
DFS caseworkers and the foster parents.  
In addition to her difficulties in managing the children, mother had not 
found stable housing or employment.  DFS, on one occasion, discovered that 
Mother left the children in the care of a person not approved for 
childcare.  After the Christmas 2005 
visit, DFS elected to return to shorter, supervised visits that continued until 
Mother's parental rights were terminated.

 
 

[¶7]           
After 
obtaining custody, DFS placed the children with Husband's father and stepmother 
in Wheatland, Wyoming.  
Approximately four months later, Husband's father and stepmother decided 
that they no longer wanted to care for the children.  The children were then placed in foster 
care.  At some point not clear in 
the record, Mother submitted to DFS the names of four relatives and asked the 
agency to consider them for family placement.  One of the names submitted was Mother's 
mother (Grandmother) who lived in Alabama with her boyfriend.1  After Grandmother was identified by 
Mother as a potential family placement option, DFS sought a report on 
Grandmother's home from the State of Alabama pursuant to the Interstate Compact on 
the Placement of Children (ICPC).  
Alabama's report revealed that Grandmother had 
outstanding warrants for her arrest in several states and her boyfriend had been 
convicted of a sexual offense involving a child.  Grandmother and her boyfriend were also 
uncooperative with the Alabama authorities.  They supplied the Alabama caseworker with a 
false address and repeatedly failed to appear for their appointments with the 
caseworker.  At the time of trial, 
Grandmother was no longer seeing the boyfriend and had moved to Mississippi.  A new ICPC request was pending in that 
state, but no report had been completed by the time of the trial. 

 
 

[¶8]           
The State 
filed its petition for termination of parental rights in January 2006, more than 
15 months after it obtained custody of the children following Mother's 
arrest.  The State sought 
termination pursuant to Wyo. Stat. Ann. §§ 14-2-309(a)(iii) and (a)(v).  After the August 2006 bench trial, the 
district court found that the State had satisfied its burden under both 
statutory provisions and severed Mother's parental rights to all three 
children.  Mother now 
appeals.

 
 

 
 

[¶9]           
The 
district court terminated Mother's parental rights pursuant to sections 
14-2-309(a)(iii) and 14-2-309(a)(v), which state: 

The parent-child legal relationship 
may be terminated if any one (1) or more of the following facts is established 
by clear and convincing evidence:

. . .

(iii)       The child 
has been abused or neglected by the parent and reasonable efforts by an 
authorized agency or mental health professional have been unsuccessful in 
rehabilitating the family or the family has refused rehabilitative treatment, 
and it is shown that the child's health and safety would be seriously 
jeopardized by remaining with or returning to the parent;

. . .

(v)        The 
child has been in foster care under the responsibility of the state of 
Wyoming for 
fifteen (15) of the most recent twenty-two (22) months, and a showing that the 
parent is unfit to have custody and control of the child.

 
 
In support of its decision to 
terminate Mother's parental rights, the district court 
concluded:

 
 
[KH] neglected the children . . . by 
her inability to care for the children while incarcerated, and by failing to 
adequately provide parenting, security, supervision and care for the children 
before her incarceration. . . .  The 
Wyoming Department of Family Services made reasonable efforts to reunite [KH] 
with her children by providing counseling, parenting classes, caseworkers, case 
plans, visitation, in-home parenting opportunities, employment assistance 
through the Power Work Program and housing assistance. . . .  In spite of those efforts to reunite 
[KH] with the children, [KH] remains unable to adequately comprehend or meet the 
needs of the children for appropriate parenting and stability.  The efforts to "rehabilitate" this 
family have been unsuccessful. . . .  
The children's health and safety would be seriously jeopardized by 
returning them to [KH] at this time. . . .  Each of the children ha[s] been in 
foster care under the responsibility of the State of Wyoming for more than 15 
of the most recent 22 months.

 
 

[¶10]       
 Mother does not claim that the district 
court's conclusions are not supported by clear and convincing evidence.  Nor does she assert that the facts fail 
to meet the statutory requirements for termination of parental rights.  Instead, Mother's position is that DFS 
should have placed her children with Grandmother because DFS's Family Services Manual encourages its 
employees to place children with family members rather than in foster 
homes.  Mother asserts that DFS's 
failure to comply with the Manual 
invalidates the termination of her parental rights.  For support, she relies on our decision 
in MB v. Dep't of Fam. Svcs., 933 P.2d 1126 (Wyo. 1997).  MB is factually distinguishable from 
Mother's case, and provides no support for her appellate position.  Moreover, the record shows that DFS did 
indeed take reasonable steps to institute a family placement, and its actions 
cannot be viewed as contrary to the Family Services Manual's 
directives.

 
 

[¶11]       
In MB, the State had removed MB's son, 
placed him in a foster home, and eventually sought to terminate MB's parental 
rights.  The district court entered 
an order terminating the rights, and MB appealed.  We reversed, noting that, "[i]n this 
case, the DFS rules in question affected M.B.'s fundamental parental 
rights."  MB, 933 P.2d  at 1130.  We also stated that where DFS's 
violations of its own rules affect a parent's fundamental rights, the rules 
"must be followed strictly and failure to follow those rules and procedures must 
result in a reversal of the action taken when a parent's rights are 
terminated."  Id.

 
 

[¶12]       
Mother's 
situation differs significantly from the factual scenario presented in MB.  In MB, all the rules violated by DFS 
directly affected MB's ability to avoid termination of her parental rights.  For example, her case plan provided end 
goals, but "failed to list any tasks for M.B. to complete in order to attain the 
goals."  Id.  DFS also failed to provide a written 
case plan to MB and, critically, failed to give her notice that her parental 
rights could be terminated if she did not comply.  Id.  Finally, DFS's failure to follow its 
rules concerning foster placement affected MB's ability to visit her child, and 
thus the probability of a speedy reunification.  See id.  It is unsurprising, then, that we held 
that "the DFS rules in question affected M.B.'s fundamental parental 
rights."  Id.

 
 

[¶13]       
Mother, 
in contrast, does not dispute that she knew her case plan and that DFS notified 
her of the goals she would have to meet to achieve family reunification.  Importantly, Mother does not claim, nor 
does the record show, that she did not receive explicit notice that failure to 
meet her goals could result in termination of her parental rights.  DFS's placement actions affected neither 
her ability to visit her children nor her ability to maintain and strengthen her 
relationship with them.  Indeed, the 
plan affirmatively required Mother to have regular visits with the 
children.  Mother's relationship 
with her children suffered in spite of the case plan and placement decisions, 
not because of them.

 
 

[¶14]       
Even if 
we were to evaluate DFS's placement actions, we would not conclude that DFS 
violated its rules.  The agency 
initiated home evaluations for each relative Mother submitted.  Grandmother's home was clearly not an 
appropriate placement choice.  Aside 
from her general uncooperativeness with the Alabama authorities, Grandmother was, at the 
time of the evaluation, living with a man convicted of felony child sexual 
abuse.  In addition, Grandmother had 
outstanding warrants for her arrest.  
Despite the results from the Alabama 
home evaluation, DFS requested a second home evaluation in Mississippi.  The State was under no obligation to 
wait for the Mississippi evaluation to be completed before 
filing a petition to terminate Mother's parental rights.  The children had been in foster care for 
15 of the previous 22 months, and accordingly, DFS was empowered by statute to 
commence termination proceedings.  
Wyo. Stat. Ann. §§ 14-2-309(a)(v), 14-2-310, 14-3-431(m).  Considering the obvious risks to the 
children's well being, DFS was justified in declining to place them in 
Grandmother's household.  

 
 

[¶15]       
Mother 
also claims that her trial counsel was ineffective by failing to introduce 
additional portions of the Family 
Services Manual into evidence.  
In light of our resolution of Mother's substantive claim, we need not 
address the ineffectiveness of counsel issue.

 
 

[¶16]       
Affirmed.

 
 
FOOTNOTES

 
 

1Mother contests only DFS's decision 
not to place the children with Grandmother.