Court Opinion

ID: 9726097
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 12:30:41.917374+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:12:48.478924
License: Public Domain

BRAUER, Acting P. J., Concurring.
I agree with the disposition and most of what is said in the opinion of the court. I part company with my *1223cohorts, however, in their characterization of the trial court’s refusal to extend the review period as being within the bounds of discretion. The implication is that the judge could have gone either way. To the contrary, I suggest that any decision other than that made would have been error.
Whatever the focus on “present circumstances” may be in other contexts and under cases which the majority concedes are not directly in point, there can be no question that what the parents here sought, and what the trial court first contemplated granting, was an extension of the period looking to possible reunification. Such extension would have been against law and against sound policy.
Welfare and Institutions Code section 361.5 calls for reunification services for “a maximum time period not to exceed 12 months.” At most, that period may be extended for an additional six months. Welfare and Institutions Code section 366.25 directs that “in order to provide stable, permanent homes for children, a court shall, if the minor cannot be returned home pursuant to subdivision (e) of section 366.2, conduct a permanency planning hearing . . . .” That section goes on to authorize further visitation with the parents only where the minor is not adoptable (Compare § 366.25, subd. (d)(1) with (d)(2)).1 Here the court made the appropriate findings on July 9, 1987, that return to the parents would be detrimental to the child, that there was no substantial probability of reunification within six months and that the child was adoptable. In the face of the most strongly expressed legislative opposition to continuances in this field, as pointed out in the opinion of the court, the Civil Code section 232 hearing was not held until nine months later.
It is clear that the statutory scheme gives the parents 12 and at most 18 months to prove themselves. Thereafter, if the child is adoptable, permanency planning pursues the aim of a new bonding. Civil Code section 232.3, subdivision (a) leaves no room for equivocation: “It is the public policy of this state that judicial proceedings to declare a child free from parental custody and control shall be fully determined as expeditiously as possible.”
I have previously had occasion to rail against the devastatingly harmful effect of delay upon children left in limbo. (In re Micah S. (1988) 198 Cal.App.3d 557, 564-568 [243 Cal.Rptr. 756].) Once adoption is determined upon, further contact with the natural parents merely exposes an already *1224bruised and fragile psyche to additional stress and conflict. It still further decreases the chances of this small human being for a glimmer of future happiness.
A petition for a rehearing was denied July 18, 1989, and appellants’ petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied September 20, 1989.

 The authorization for parental visitation in subdivision (d)(2) with regard to unadoptable children was first enacted in 1988. Theretofore, there were no provisions for such visitation after the permanency planning hearing.