IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 22-0382

Filed April 27, 2022

IN THE INTEREST OF K.P.,

Minor Child,

S.S., Mother,

Appellant.

________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Story County, Stephen A. Owen, 

District Associate Judge.

A mother appeals the juvenile court’s denial of her motion for modification of 

a child-in-need-of-assistance order. AFFIRMED.

Shannon Leighty of the Public Defender’s Office, Nevada, for appellant 

mother.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Mary A. Triick, Assistant Attorney 

General, for appellee State.

Kelly Grossman, Nevada, attorney and guardian ad litem for minor child.

Considered by May, P.J., Schumacher, J., and Vogel, S.J.*

*Senior judge assigned by order pursuant to Iowa Code section 602.9206 

(2022).
2

VOGEL, Senior Judge.

The mother of K.P., born in 2005, appeals from the February 14, 2022 

juvenile court order, which denied the mother’s request for K.P. to be returned to 

her care. 

K.P. was removed from her mother’s care on September 8, 2021, on 

allegations the mother was “leaving her in the home alone, sending her to the store 

on errands alone, and allowing contact with a registered sex offender.” K.P. has 

special physical and intellectual needs, and she is unable to self-protect. After the 

removal, K.P. was placed in a foster home, where she has remained. 

On October 22, with the mother’s stipulation, K.P. was adjudicated a child in

need of assistance (CINA) under Iowa Code section 232.2(6)(c)(2) (2021).

1

 The 

adjudication was affirmed in the dispositional order of November 22, and services 

were continued. 

The mother filed a motion for modification on January 27, 2022, requesting

K.P. be returned to her care.2

 

1 Under Iowa Code section 232.2(6)(c)(2), a “child in need of assistance” is a child 

“[w]ho has suffered or is imminently likely to suffer harmful effects as a result of . . .

[t]he failure of the child’s parent, guardian, custodian or other member of the 

household in which the child resides to exercise a reasonable degree of care in 

supervising the child.”

2 At that time, the foster mother requested K.P. be placed elsewhere. Because the 

only placement then available was a three-hour drive from the mother’s residence, 

the mother requested K.P. be returned to her care. Since then, the foster mother 

has withdrawn her request for another placement and has agreed to keep K.P. in 

her care. 
3

After a February 14 hearing, the juvenile court found the mother was no 

closer to the goal of reunification than when the case began, and the court denied 

the motion. 

I. Standard of Review. We review CINA proceedings de novo. In re K.N., 

625 N.W.2d 731, 733 (Iowa 2001). “As in all juvenile proceedings, our fundamental 

concern is the best interests of the child.” Id.

II. Modifying a Dispositional Order

The court may modify a dispositional order in a juvenile proceeding if the 

proof satisfies Iowa Code section 232.103(4), which requires the juvenile court to 

find all of the following: 

a. The purposes of the order have been accomplished and the 

child is no longer in need of supervision, care, or treatment.

b. The purposes of the order cannot reasonably be 

accomplished.

c. The efforts made to effect the purposes of the order have 

been unsuccessful and other options to effect the purposes of the 

order are not available.

d. The purposes of the order have been sufficiently 

accomplished and the continuation of supervision, care, or treatment 

is unjustified or unwarranted.

Because K.P. was removed for her own safety, the juvenile court began its 

analysis of the current situation by stating: “This case exists to prevent the sexual 

abuse of [K.P.]. She has been abused in the past due to a lack of supervision by 

the mother.” 

As the November 12, 2021 Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS)

report stated: “[The mother] has an extensive history with [DHS] for lack of 

supervision and denial of critical care. Due to her own low functioning abilities, she 

continues to struggle to understand safety for [K.P.] and providing her with 
4

adequate supervision.” The report listed seven separate founded incidents of child 

abuse with the mother as the perpetrator primarily for denial of critical care—failure 

to provide proper supervision. Other founded reports were of the mother’s male 

companions who sexually abused K.P. 

At the modification hearing, the mother testified she shares a two-bedroom 

apartment with two other people—a man and a woman. They lived with the mother 

for almost two months prior to the hearing. She claimed they were “safe people” 

for K.P. to be around because she ran an Internet check on each to see if they had 

criminal backgrounds. The mother admitted she has had “some slip-up in my 

judgments” as it pertained to prior roommates or persons she exposed K.P. to, but 

she claimed she can “trust full heartedly” her two new roommates. Therefore, the 

mother claims K.P. would be safe if returned to her care. 

The mother has her own intellectual disabilities and concerns regarding her 

mental health, and she receives community services to assist with daily life skills. 

The mother attends mental-health therapy once every two weeks and a medication 

management appointment once every three months. But as the juvenile court 

found, “nothing in her testimony even remotely addressed how she has gained any 

better appreciation as to how to maintain [K.P.’s] safety than when the case began.” 

The DHS worker testified that the mother has “taken a step back” from being aware 

and involved in K.P.’s needs and by missing important medical and progress 

appointments for K.P. Nonetheless, the goal of the CINA proceeding was to return 

K.P. to the mother’s home. 

K.P. has no ability to self-protect, and she needs round-the-clock supervision 

and assistance with her basic physical needs. We agree with the juvenile court that 
5

the mother has not “demonstrated protective supervision” and that she “has not 

[met] any threshold showing under section 232.103, that the dispositional goal has 

been made or cannot be met.” We therefore affirm the denial of the mother’s motion 

for modification.

AFFIRMED.