Court Opinion

ID: 9369338
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-02-08 16:05:32.12009+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:14.338407
License: Public Domain

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

                                    No. 22-1839
                               Filed February 8, 2023

IN THE INTEREST OF L.S. and C.S.,
Minor Children,

A.M., Mother,
      Appellant.
________________________________________________________________

       Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, Christine Dalton Ploof,

District Associate Judge.

       A mother challenges the juvenile court’s dispositional finding that the State

has made reasonable efforts to return her children to her custody. AFFIRMED.

       Grishma Arumugam, Davenport, for appellant mother.

       Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Mackenzie L. Moran, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee State.

       Jennifer Olsen of Olsen Law Firm, Davenport, attorney and guardian ad

litem for minor children.

       Considered by Tabor, P.J., and Schumacher and Ahlers, JJ.
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TABOR, Presiding Judge.

       A mother contends that the Iowa Department of Health and Human Serivces

has not made reasonable efforts to return her children, L.S. born in 2020 and C.S.

born in 2021, to her custody. Her contention focuses on the slow progression of

her visits with the children. She also argues the juvenile court used an incorrect

standard in deciding her reasonable-efforts claim.

       Like the mother, we find the department should have acted with more

urgency in scheduling visitation with her children early in the case. But we also

agree with the juvenile court that circumstances required “taking a careful

approach . . . for the safety of these children.” At this time, we reject the mother’s

reasonable-efforts challenge.1

       This case opened in April 2022 when the mother had a physical fight with

the children’s paternal grandmother and drove away, while intoxicated, with six-

month-old C.S. in the car.        Child protective services returned a founded

assessment of improper supervision by the mother. The parents agreed to a safety

plan with the department.2 But one month later, the mother fought with the father

and attempted suicide. After being released from the hospital, she admitted to

stopping her mental-health medication and drinking alcohol. The parents signed

a new safety plan in June, agreeing that the mother would not watch the children

without supervision and would be a sober caretaker. In violation of that plan, the

1 The mother appeals from a dispositional order. In child-welfare cases, we review
the evidence de novo. In re J.R.H., 358 N.W.2d 311, 317 (Iowa 1984).
2 This safety plan provided that both parents would maintain sobriety while

parenting the children; there would be no physical altercations around the children;
and the mother would obtain a substance-abuse evaluation and follow through with
its recommendations.
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mother took the children to an out-of-town wedding and cared for them at the

motel—by herself, while intoxicated. Child protective services again returned a

founded assessment of improper supervision by the mother.

       In July, the juvenile court adjudicated C.S. and L.S. as children in need of

assistance (CINA) and placed them in their father’s custody. By the time of the

adjudication hearing, the mother had entered treatment.

       At the CINA disposition hearing in October, the mother’s counsel argued

that the department was not making reasonable efforts to reunite her with the

children. For starters, after the CINA adjudication, the department did not set up

visitation for three or four weeks despite the mother’s requests. According to

counsel, “[t]hey wouldn’t cooperate with her, get her the schedule. They would ask

her for her employment, she provided the past supervisor a number of timesheets

and still they wouldn’t really get her visits set up. So she was pretty frustrated.”

The mother also asserted the case worker did not contact her from July to

September. The department did not counter that assertion. In fact, case work

manager Christopher Moeller testified at the disposition hearing that he

remembered the mother telling him that she “did not have a lot of communication”

with the first worker assigned to the case. He also testified that he believed that

the department had at first allowed the father to supervise the mother’s interactions

with the children.

       That supervision by the father was a point of contention. In her petition on

appeal, the mother claims that two providers knew that the father was supervising

her daily interactions with the children, and she “continued having daily and

overnight visits for two months without any concerns.” But a new caseworker
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stopped that arrangement and reduced her visits to just two-hour sessions twice

weekly supervised by the service provider.

       Moeller confirmed that the department now believed that the father “should

not be approved to supervise the visits.” The court agreed, telling the mother that

the court wanted the service provider “to be the eyes for the visits so we can quickly

move to unsupervised or semi-supervised” visits.           The court explained its

preference for professional supervision: “Because she’s somebody that’s going to

be neutral, understands parenting and any kind of risk to safety that we have to

worry about.”

       As its bottom line, the court found that the department had provided

reasonable efforts to facilitate the goal of reunification. It acknowledged: “While

the schedule may not be to the mother’s liking, the court finds that taking a careful

approach is necessary for the safety of these children due to their age and inability

to self-protect or care for themselves if their mother is again ill.” The mother

contests that finding.

       In her petition on appeal, the mother asks us to reverse the dispositional

order. She argues the juvenile court applied an “incorrect standard” in rejecting

her reasonable-efforts challenge. In her words, “[T]he court made clear its belief

the mother had no basis to claim [the department] failed to make reasonable efforts

because she should not be complaining about what the social workers aren’t doing

that she is manipulating.”

       In assessing the mother’s claim, we start by defining “reasonable efforts.”

That term forms the foundation of the State’s duty to protect the integrity of the

family whenever possible. It means “the efforts made to preserve and unify a
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family prior to the out-of-home placement of a child in foster care or to eliminate

the need for removal of the child or make it possible for the child to safely return to

the family’s home.” Iowa Code § 232.102A(1)(a) (2022). “A child’s health and

safety shall be the paramount concern in making reasonable efforts.” Id. The

department must make reasonable efforts to reunite parent and child before

moving forward with the termination of parental rights. In re M.B., 553 N.W.2d 343,

345 (Iowa Ct. App. 1996).

       Key to this appeal, reasonable efforts include “visitation designed to

facilitate reunification while providing adequate protection for the child.” In re C.B.,

611 N.W.2d 489, 493 (Iowa 2000). Indeed, “[v]isitation between a parent and child

is an important ingredient to the goal of reunification.” M.B., 533 N.W.2d at 345.

Experts maintain that the frequency of family time is a “strong predictor of children

being united with their parents.” See Leonard Edwards, Reasonable Efforts: A

Judicial Perspective (2d ed. 2021) at 49. Still, “the nature and extent of visitation

is always controlled by the best interests of the child.” M.B., 533 N.W.2d at 345.

       The mother made an appropriate demand for reasonable efforts after the

CINA adjudication. And the record supports her assertion that the department was

slow in scheduling supervised visits. We often lecture parents that “the crucial

days of childhood” cannot be suspended while they work to correct their problems.

See generally In re A.C., 415 N.W.2d 609, 613 (Iowa 1987). That same urgency

must apply to the department’s efforts. The workers should have been able to set

up visitation between the mother and children within a month of adjudication.

       That said, the evidence at the disposition hearing shows that the

department was making a more concerted effort to ensure that the mother was
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having more frequent and safe interactions with her children.          To that end,

manager Moeller testified that, on top of the professionally supervised visits, the

department had approved the maternal grandmother to oversee additional

interactions between the mother and children.

       And contrary to the mother’s arguments, we do not find the juvenile court

applied a faulty standard in assessing reasonable efforts. The court’s reference to

the mother’s “manipulation” referred to her interactions with the father, not with the

department. The court evaluated the totality of the department’s reunification

efforts to date and judged them reasonable. Like the juvenile court, we find that

the department met the reasonable-efforts standard at the time of the hearing.

       AFFIRMED.