Court Opinion

ID: 7396018
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-29 01:16:12.590145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:21:48.133484
License: Public Domain

LEVINSON, Judge concurring.
I write separately to clarify the reasons I believe the trial court erred by ordering that visitation between respondent-parents and the juvenile be in the discretion of DSS.
Any dispositional order under which a juvenile is removed from the custody of a parent, guardian, custodian, or caretaker, or under which the juvenile's placement is continued outside the home shall provide for appropriate visitation as may be in the best interests of the juvenile and consistent with the juvenile's health and safety. If the juvenile is placed in the custody or placement responsibility of a county department of social services, the court may order the director to arrange, facilitate, and supervise a visitation plan expressly approved by the court. If the director subsequently makes a good faith determination that the visitation plan may not be in the best interests of the juvenile or consistent with the juvenile's health and safety, the director may temporarily suspend all or part of the visitation plan. The director shall not be subjected to any motion to show cause for this suspension, but shall expeditiously file a motion for review.
N.C. Gen.Stat. § 7B-905(c)(2005) (emphasis added).
This statute provides that, in the event the juvenile is placed in the care of DSS, "the court" may require DSS to "arrange, facilitate, and supervise a visitation plan expressly approved by the court." In other words, the court must establish the visitation plan. This statute does not authorize DSS to do so. The provision in G.S. § 7B-905(c) affording the director of DSS to "temporarily suspend" visitation under certain circumstances does not suggest that DSS itself may, as in the instant case, be ordered to establish and implement its own plan. In authorizing the director of DSS to suspend visitation, the General Assembly was apparently concerned with those emergency circumstances where hearings before the trial court are not immediately practicable.
According to the majority opinion, DSS must submit a visitation plan "to the trial court for approval" on remand. My concern with the reasoning in the majority opinion is that it does not squarely conclude that the trial court erred by vesting discretion in DSS to determine visitation "at such time[s] and on such terms and conditions as [DSS] deems appropriate."