Opinion ID: 2629181
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Parent is Unfit

Text: Section 19-3-604(1)(c)(II) also required the court to find that C.S. was unfit to be a parent to S.S. In making this determination, section 19-3-604(2) directs the court to considerbut does not limit the court toseveral enumerated factors before finding that the parent's conduct or condition of the parent renders [her] ... unable or unwilling to give the child reasonable parental care to include, at a minimum, nurturing and safe parenting sufficiently adequate to meet the child's physical, emotional, and mental health needs and conditions. The statute expressly permits the court to consider whether the parent's [e]motional illness, mental illness, or mental deficiency [is] of such duration or nature as to render the parent unlikely within a reasonable time to care for the ongoing physical, mental, and emotional needs and conditions of the child. § 19-3-604(2)(a); § 19-3-604(1)(b)(I). In support of its findings, the court had before it the information in Reed's report, as discussed above, which, the court found, established that reasonable efforts by the Department had failed to rehabilitate C.S. as a parent, also an enumerated factor under section 19-3-604(2)(h). As well, the court considered the testimony of Dr. Gardner, who testified at the hearing concerning his psychological evaluation of C.S. He reported that C.S.'s permanent psychological state was such that she would likely never be emotionally intimate with her children and that she had further failed to demonstrate any ability to keep a safe, secure home for her children or herself. He emphasized that C.S.'s inability to trust others would severely inhibit her capacity to seek the help she needed to become a fit parent. Finally, the court also noted that S.S. had been outside the custody of his mother for nearly fifteen of his twenty months of life, an additional factor to be considered by the court. See § 19-3-604(2)(k). Despite the testimony of C.S.'s one witness, and C.S.'s own protestations, there was adequate support in the record to find C.S. an unfit parent.