Opinion ID: 2517116
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Despite Wilson's Refusal To Cooperate, OCS Continued To Make Active Efforts.

Text: Despite Wilson's threats and refusal to cooperate with OCS, OCS still made active efforts to reunify the family and facilitate Wilson's treatment of his issues. Below, we examine a few of these examples of active efforts: providing gas vouchers, facilitating enrollment for prescribed classes, arranging supervised visitation at the OCS offices, and facilitating weekly telephone calls. These efforts, which continued even past Wilson's refusal to comply with requirements or cooperate with OCS, are more than sufficient to meet ICWA's active efforts requirement. Because OCS was unable to offer services in Trapper Creek or Talkeetna, Jones offered Wilson and Sarah a fifty dollar gas voucher. Jones first offered the gas voucher for visitation purposes, but withheld mailing it after Wilson cancelled Sarah's visit. When Sarah later told OCS that she was unable to attend the parenting classes due to her inability to afford gas, Mallett again offered the gas card to Sarah for her and Wilson's use to attend their prescribed classes. Sarah and Wilson never came to claim the gas card while Mallett was on the case. Harter ultimately provided the gas voucher to Wilson and Sarah approximately two weeks before the adjudication hearing. Furthermore, OCS took active steps to ensure that Wilson and Sarah could enroll in and attend the parenting and domestic violence classes. Because there was a question of whether Wilson and Sarah would be able to afford such classes, Mallett testified that she discussed funding options with Wilson and Sarah for the domestic violence programs. She indicated it may be possible to secure funding through Sarah's tribe, through OCS, or through a work-it-off program run by Alaska Family Services. In addition to discussing funding options with Wilson and Sarah, Mallett contacted the parenting class referral on their behalf to learn the dates of the programs and other details. Mallett further testified that she did not contact the coordinator of the domestic violence classes because Wilson and Sarah indicated that they would attend those classes only if they were court-ordered. Mallett thus took active steps in approaching the funding issue, recognizing the financial instability of the parents, and took steps to enroll them in the one class that they expressed some degree of willingness to complete. In addition, OCS arranged visitation between Sarah and her children even though such visitation was made difficult by Wilson's violent threats. As noted above, the OCS office in this case typically contracts out supervised visitation to Alaska Family Services. When Alaska Family Services refused to supervise visitation because of Wilson's prior actions, Mallett arranged supervised visitation for Sarah at the OCS office even though OCS typically does not supervise visits. Here, OCS went beyond its normal procedure to allow for visitation even though it was Wilson's behavior that precluded OCS from following its normal protocol of contracting out this supervised visitation to Alaska Family Services. Mallett also made herself available at the same time each week to answer all of Wilson and Sarah's questions regarding their case. Mallett admittedly missed the first meeting, but made herself available each week after that to answer questions. Mallett testified that, after the initial mishap, she and the parents were able to talk during these weekly phone calls. After some time, Mallett found that each week she would call and the phone call would last less than a minute before Wilson would end the call. When this pattern continued, Mallett then began to coordinate through the attorneys. Mallett's efforts to arrange a set time, call the parents, continue to attempt to have these weekly telephonic conferences despite the parties' lack of cooperation, and then pursue other routes of communication demonstrate active efforts by this OCS social worker. Determining whether the state has made active efforts requires a very fact specific inquiry. The facts in this case overwhelmingly show that OCS workers, despite being threatened by a man with a violent past, made sincere but unsuccessful efforts to help Wilson address domestic violence problems.