Court Opinion

ID: 9900933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-20 19:03:36.838804+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:21:22.577540
License: Public Domain

Filed 11/20/23 In re J.G. CA4/1
                   NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or
ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for
purposes of rule 8.1115.

                 COURT OF APPEAL, FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

                                                       DIVISION ONE

                                              STATE OF CALIFORNIA

In re J.G., a Person Coming Under
the Juvenile Court Law.
                                                                       D082301
IMPERIAL COUNTY
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL
SERVICES,                                                              (Super. Ct. No. JJP0000878)

          Plaintiff and Respondent,

          v.

G.M.,

          Defendant and Appellant.

          APPEAL from an order of the Superior Court of Imperial County,
Marco D. Nunez, Judge. Affirmed.
          Leslie A. Barry, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for
Defendant and Appellant.
          Kelly Ranasinghe, Deputy County Counsel, for Plaintiff and
Respondent.
      G.M. (Mother)1 appeals from both the March 2023 juvenile court order

denying her Welfare and Institutions Code2 section 388 petition and the May
2023 order terminating her parental rights under section 366.26. She claims
the denial of her modification petition was an abuse of discretion, and,
further, had the court not abused its discretion, it could not have terminated

her parental rights.3
              FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
      On November 27, 2020 the Imperial County Department of Social
Services (Department) placed newborn J.G. into protective custody after a
toxicology screening produced a positive result for methamphetamine and
amphetamine. Mother admitted to using methamphetamines the day before
delivering J.G. She admitted that she began using the illicit substances prior
to finding out she was pregnant and did not stop upon learning of her
pregnancy. Department filed a petition under section 300, subd. (b) in
December 2020, the juvenile court found Department made a prima facie case
and ordered J.G. detained. The court sustained the petition at the
jurisdiction hearing. At the disposition hearing in March 2021, the court
declared J.G. a dependent, ordered him removed from parental custody, and
ordered reunification services for Mother. J.G. spent approximately the first

1     Father is not a party to this appeal.

2     Undesignated statutory references are to the Welfare and Institutions
Code.

3      Mother’s notice of appeal was from the judgment terminating her
parental rights, but her opening brief discussed only the denial of her 388
petition. We grant Mother’s request and construe her notice of appeal of the
order terminating her parental rights as a challenge to the court’s order
denying her section 388 petition for modification.
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two and a half years of his life away from Mother before the court terminated
her parental rights.
      A. Mother’s Substance Use History
      J.G. was removed from Mother’s care as a result of her inability to
adequately supervise or protect him due to Mother’s substance use.
Therefore, discussion of Mother’s substance use history is necessary to
resolve this matter.
      Mother acknowledged “a drug abuse problem” and the “need for
intervention services” and “substance use disorder counseling.” After J.G.
was removed from her care, she was a “no show” to a December 24, 2020 drug
test; Mother also missed her intake appointment for the Imperial County
Substance Use Disorder Program. At the dispositional hearing in March
2021, four months into her separation from J.G., the court found Mother had
made no progress towards mitigating the causes necessitating placement—
her drug addiction. Mother admitted herself to a local hospital for assistance
with withdrawal symptoms in June 2021; however, Mother again tested
positive in July 2021 while six months pregnant with J.G.’s sibling. At the
six-month review hearing, the court concluded Mother had made only
minimal progress towards the causes mitigating placement.
      Mother began a three-month inpatient rehabilitation program on
August 9, 2021 but left on August 13, 2021. Mother tested negative for drugs
when J.G.’s sibling was born and during a random urinalysis in October
2021. Then, Mother missed two drug screening requests on sequential days
in January 2022. By the 12-month review hearing, the court found Mother to
be progressing in mitigating the causes necessitating placement. However,
Mother tested positive for methamphetamines and amphetamines on a
subsequent drug test taken on January 25, 2022. She again tested positive

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on February 4, 2022. The three minor children that resided with Mother also
tested positive for methamphetamine and amphetamine; J.G. tested
negative. Mother did not enroll into an inpatient rehabilitation program, and
again missed a requested drug test in May 2022.
      Mother reported enrolling in an inpatient rehabilitation program in
June 2022. Staff at the program indicated she walked out of the office during
the intake process. On June 23, 2022, Mother submitted to a urinalysis and
hair strand drug test; the urinalysis test returned negative but the hair
strand test returned positive. At the 18-month review hearing on July 18,
2022, Mother admitted to her recent positive drug test and understood that
the drug test was “sufficient to be unsuccessful to challenge the Department’s
report.” The court concluded Mother’s progress in mitigating the causes
necessitating placement was minimal, ordered reunification services
terminated, and set a section 366.26 hearing to terminate Mother’s parental
rights for November 2, 2022. After termination of her reunification services
on July 18, 2022, Mother and the prospective adoptive parent “agreed to keep
in communication monthly in regards to [J.G.].”
      B. Mother’s Contact with J.G.
      Mother’s contact with J.G. was sporadic. Between separation and May
2021, Mother completed one video visit with J.G. In June, 2021, Mother
began video visits with J.G. and progressed to in-person visits. In November
2021, J.G. began visiting Mother for unsupervised visits in her home.
      Following Mother’s January 2022 relapse, however, unsupervised
visitation was suspended. J.G.’s siblings were also removed from Mother’s

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care in February 2022.4 In subsequent supervised visits, where J.G.’s
siblings were also present, Mother did not display the same bond with J.G.
that she had with the siblings. Mother did not greet or hug J.G. and left J.G.
to play on his own. Visitation was “shown to be determinantal to [J.G.]”
when he became ill after putting parts of a mop in his mouth while
unattended and after social services assistants discovered J.G. playing with
pointy objects and choking hazards. Mother expressed that J.G. did not
“familiarize, remember, or know her.” In contrast, J.G. was “thriving in
placement, [and] bonding well with caregiver provider and family.” J.G. has
never lived in Mother’s custody, and “has a strong attachment” to the
caregiver provider who now seeks to adopt J.G. Mother conceded there was
“not a close bond between [Mother] and [Child].”
      C. Case History Following the Termination of Reunification Services
      The court called the section 366.26 hearing on December 5, 2022 and
continued it after Mother stated her intention to file a section 388 petition
and indicated that there might be “4 possible fathers.” Mother later filed a
section 388 petition seeking J.G.’s return to her custody. The court continued
the section 366.26 hearing to April 5, 2023 and set the section 388 petition
hearing for January 1, 2023. The section 388 hearing was continued to
February 8, 2023, then March 1, 2023 and again to March 2, 2023.
      In support of her section 388 petition, Mother cited her completion of 60
days of residential treatment, and lodged three certificates of completion for
various parenting courses. She participated in Alcoholics Anonymous, where
she felt more comfortable than Narcotics Anonymous. She received

4     Mother requests we take judicial notice of the dependency records
regarding her other children. Her request for judicial notice is denied. The
documents were before the juvenile court; however, the status of her other
dependency cases are not relevant to the issue on appeal.
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residential treatment for most of October and November 2022, and reported
her last date of use to be September 20, 2022. In advance of the hearing,
Mother tested negative for drugs on January 25, 2023. She asserts she
“turned her life around.” When she filed her petition, Mother had been sober
approximately three months and, at the time of her hearing, was sober for
between five and six months.
      The Department opposed Mother’s section 388 petition. Both the
Department and the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) recommended
J.G. remain as placed.
      The court denied Mother’s section 388 petition and declined to make
findings “indicating circumstances have changed.” The court praised
Mother’s “great strides in her road to recovery” but was not blind to her
“backsliding.” Because Mother relapsed two months after reunification
services as to J.G. were terminated, the court could conclude only that “she’s
in the process of change.” The court found that the bond between Mother and
J.G. was “not strong” and terminated Mother’s parental rights at the section
366.26 hearing in May 2023.
                                 DISCUSSION
      Mother contends the court abused its discretion when it denied her
section 388 petition. She complains the court found only that her
circumstances were “changing” while she believed them “changed.” We
disagree. As detailed below, the court had substantial evidence to conclude
that, while Mother’s circumstances were changing at the time of the section
388 hearing, they had not substantially changed.
      After termination of reunification services, “ ‘ the focus shifts to the
needs of the child for permanency and stability. ’ ” (In re Stephanie M. (1994)
7 Cal.4th 295, 317.) “[T]here is a rebuttable presumption that continued

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foster care is in the best interest of the child.” (Ibid.) A parent must
establish by a preponderance of the evidence both a change in circumstances
and the promotion of the child’s best interests. (In re Zachary G. (1999) 77
Cal.App.4th 799, 806.) Not every change in circumstance can justify
modification of a prior order. (In re S.R. (2009) 173 Cal.App.4th 864, 870.)
      Indeed, “[i]t is rare that the denial of a section 388 motion merits
reversal as an abuse of discretion.” (In re Kimberly F. (1997) 56 Cal.App.4th
519, 522 (Kimberly F.).) Reversal may be appropriate when the reason for
removal is “not as serious as other, more typical reasons for dependency
jurisdiction, such as sexual abuse, physical abuse, or illegal drug use” and the
removal of that reason constitutes a “genuine change of circumstances.”
(Ibid.)
      The instant case falls squarely within the category of more serious
reasons for removal enumerated in Kimberly F. As observed by the court
“[t]he reasons leading to removal were serious. [Mother] was using
methamphetamine on an almost daily basis and the children were testing
positive.” Demonstrating a genuine change in circumstances was not a
matter of making a home tidy, it was a matter of overcoming chemical
dependency with a history of backsliding. Mother testified that she believed
she could stop using methamphetamines on her own and notes that she was
able to “on a few occasions.” The longest of these occasions was a period
between August 2021 and January 2022, after which Mother relapsed.
      Mother’s sobriety immediately prior to the section 388 hearing does not
constitute a substantial or genuine change in circumstances. She agreed that
she was “fairly young in [her] recovery” and that she continued to experience
triggers surrounding “situations of desperation, people, [and] places.” While
her efforts are commendable, Mother had previously been sober for a similar

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period of time only to return to drug use. She matched her longest previous
period of sobriety prior to the hearing in part due to the court’s multiple
continuations.
      Concluding there was no substantial change in circumstances at the
time of the section 388 hearing, we need not delve deeply into whether
returning to Mother was in J.G.’s best interest. Nevertheless, we note the
strong bond J.G. had with his caregiver and that Mother herself did not want
to remove J.G. from his placement because it was “the only place and family
[J.G.] knows.”
      At the subsequent section 366.26 hearing, held on May 3, 2023, Mother
stipulated to the Department’s report and offered nothing further in
argument or evidence. The hearing was not set as a contested hearing and
Mother, through her attorney, submitted on the issue of section 366.26
without discussing or preserving any exceptions to adoption. The court
adopted Department’s recommendations and terminated Mother’s parental
rights.

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                                DISPOSITION
      The orders denying the section 388 petition and terminating Mother’s
parental rights are affirmed.

                                                        McCONNELL, P. J.

WE CONCUR:

IRION, J.

CASTILLO, J.

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