Opinion ID: 2556516
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: June 2009 Review Hearing

Text: Two months after Dr. Lewis's interviews, the juvenile court held another review hearing. Prior to the hearing, Ms. B. moved to exclude Dr. Lewis's report with regard to her assessment, citing patient-psychologist privilege. The juvenile court granted the motion, and a redacted copy of the report was received into evidence. At the hearing, Gimperling testified as the sole witness, and she chronicled the Department's efforts since the previous hearing to rehabilitate Ms. B. so that she could be reunited with the Children. Specifically, Gimperling had been in contact with DORS so that Ms. B. could receive vocational training from Melwood. [6] Yet, because of the funding circumstances right now between the State and [DORS], they're not referring clients to [Melwood] at this time because [Melwood] does not have the funding to provide them with that vocational training service. Gimperling encountered the same problem when she contacted the DDA, another resource that could fund Ms. B.'s Melwood services. Even though the DDA did accept Ms. B. and placed her on its waiting list for funds, it repeatedly told Gimperling that it was unsure when Ms. B. would be eligible for services. [7] Gimperling also contacted the Community Connections agency to get some ideas as to [whether there were] other pots of money that could be drawn off of to somehow provide her with services. She learned of a couple thousand dollars in rolling access funds, but by January, those funds had already been exhausted for that funding year. As there was no money to have any assessments done by either a psychiatrist or a psychologist from DDA, [Gimperling] then made the referral to Dr. Lewis. Gimperling had also been communicating with the Arc of Prince George's County, an organization that offers a support group for parents who have developmental disabilities and who have children with developmental disabilities. In addition to Gimperling's attempts to connect Ms. B. with services from the DDA, Melwood, and the Arc, the Department assisted Ms. B. with her daily living. After Ms. B. allowed her Medical Assistance lapse, Gimperling helped her to reactivate it. Ms. B. also suffered from high blood pressure and high blood sugar, and she allowed these medical conditions to go untreated. Upon learning of this, a Department case associate took Ms. B. to an urgent medical care facility, which later transferred Ms. B. to the hospital after she complained of chest pains. The case associate stayed with Ms. B. during her entire hospital visit, helped her to get medicine afterwards, and then took her home. The case associate also scheduled Ms. B.'s gynecological and dental exams and transported her to her medical appointments. Moreover, the Department took Ms. B. to and from all of the Children's educational appointments, and caseworkers have been there with her and helped to try and explain the [C]hildren's educational status. Department workers have also transported Ms. B. for all of the family visits that occur at the agency. Later in the hearing, Gimperling recounted her observations of Ms. B.'s interactions with the Children. During the supervised visits, Gimperling would bring in games or prepare an activity for Ms. B. and the Children to complete together, but it was always a challenge to keep each of them focused on the activity at hand. Gimperling also noticed that Ms. B. focused her aggression on Davon. A case associate reported seeing Ms. B. strike Davon on multiple occasions, and Gimperling observed that Ms. B. would keep food from Davon: Food is brought in, like candy and different cookies and treats. [Ms. B.] usually primarily starts with Shirley, favoring Shirley first, and then will distribute. And if Davon is wanting to have something somebody else has, rather than letting them maybe [share], she will just immediately say, no, Davon, you can't have it. And if he attempts to then get it, she will hit him, and she yelled at him. Gimperling instructed Ms. B. on how to handle her children in a stressful situation, but Ms. B. still continued to strike Davon. Regarding the unsupervised visits between Shirley and Ms. B., Shirley had reported that she would use her own allowance money to purchase groceries for Ms. B. Gimperling also testified that the children were thriving in their current placements. Shirley had made extreme progress in her current foster home and was performing much better in school because she has a very consistent schedule in terms of she knows what to expect on a daily basis. Davon, Jordan, and Cedric were also doing well in their foster placements, and there was potential for those placements to become adoptive resources for them. When asked what efforts the Department could make to reunify the Children with Ms. B. within the next year, Gimperling responded, I don't know what we could do to make [reunification] a safe situation where all the kids would flourish as they are right now. At the conclusion of the hearing, the juvenile court changed the permanency plan from reunification to adoption. The court emphasized that it was not reconsidering its decision from the December hearing, but rather making a decision based upon the lack of progress since the time of that hearing. The court found that it was not in the Children's best interests to be reunited with Ms. B. because she had not received the necessary educational training and she did not reside in a home that would accommodate the Children. It recognized that Ms. B. had cooperated with the Department, but it still did not believe that the Children could be safe in her care. Regarding the Department's efforts, the court explained that the Department's responsibilities did not include making administrative decisions for other agencies charged with specific responsibilities. The court did not think that it was appropriate in any of these instances to order the [Department] to finance services that are within the purview of other agencies, such as the [DDA] or [DORS]. Against this backdrop, the court found that, since the December hearing, the Department ha[d] done more [with regard to linking Ms. B. with services consistent with her abilities.] The Department is at the mercy of agencies that lack necessary funding to provide services that are critical to informing this Court as well as the parties as to the process for [Ms. B.] to acquire skills that are necessary to meet the special needs of Cedric, D[a]von, Jordan and Shirley. Those are special educational needs, as well as developmental needs. The [c]ourt finds that mother requires services that will allow her to have assistance that will permit her to attend to those needs. The evidence is that mother requires handson assistance of the Department to meet her very own personal needs. And the [c]ourt finds that mother is not able to access or to negotiate the system that's necessary to provide for the safety of the four children, or to attend to their developmental and educational needs. [W]e don't know how much time it would take for funding to become available to the agencies. We know that now we're 28 months into the life of the children with the Department[.] The [c]ourt finds that the Department globallythe Department has made reasonable efforts to achieve the plan [for] reunification by referring mother to the [DDA] and [DORS], assisting in her preparation of the application and a submission in achieving placement of mother on a second tier waiting lista waiting list at the second tier. The Department has made reasonable efforts by attempting to . . . determine when mother may be able to receive services, and those efforts have met with an inability of the agency to give a date when services might be available. The Department's efforts have included determining when mother might be able to be placed with [Melwood], only to find that . . . [Melwood] is no longer receiving  taking clients of [DORS]. The Department's reasonable efforts included contacting the Community Connections Agency to determine if other funds were available for the services that were not . . . readily accessible through the [DDA] and [DORS]. And funds that might have been available had been exhausted by January of 2009, within a . . . relatively short period of time after the parties were before the [c]ourt. The Department's reasonable efforts included obtaining a necessary neuro-psychological evaluation in an effort to provide an evaluation that would have otherwise been funded by these other sources, albeit the evaluation that this Court did not review. The Department's efforts included obtaining a . . . family clinical interview with regard to the children. The Department's reasonable efforts included discussing with mother medical issues, assisting her in reactivating her medical assistance . . . arranging for and transporting for medical appointments, including a gynecological examination, as well as an examination to address issues of high blood pressure. The Department's reasonable efforts [have] included transportation of mother to educational meetings, appointments affecting the minor children, and assisting her in understanding what [is] occurring during those sessions, including assisting her with questioning. The Department's efforts have included transporting mother to visits with the children. The element of transporting mother and assisting with appointments and scheduling is indicative and representative of the [c]ourt's concerns about mother's inability to access or to navigate systems that are more complex with regard to . . . addressing the educational and developmental needs of each of the [children].    And the [c]ourt finds that it's in the [Children's] best interest [to change] each of [their] permanency [plans to] adoption. The [c]ourt finds that it continues to be in the interest of each of the [Children] that the Department continue at a minimum to follow up on referrals to the [DDA] and [DORS]. And the [c]ourtthe context of that is that each of the children have a strong b[o]nd to their mother. Who knows? Next month the funding could become available. I don't think it's going to happen, but (indiscernible) we're at the bottom of it all. But at the same time if there iswe know the process. There's a long road from filing a petition for guardianship and the granting of the guardianship. We know and the [c]ourt believes that it's going to be in the best interest of these children if at all possible that there would be continued visitation  that there be a continued contact with mother. Ms. B. timely appealed the juvenile court's decision on the grounds that the Department failed to make reasonable efforts toward reunification because Ms. B. never received any specialized parenting services. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the lower court's finding that the Department had made reasonable efforts and held that the court did not abuse its discretion by changing the permanency plan to adoption. See In re Shirley B., 191 Md.App. 678, 719, 993 A.2d 675, 699 (2010). This Court then granted Ms. B's Petition for a Writ of Certiorari.