Court Opinion

ID: 9732680
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:31:18.912281+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:23:33.222365
License: Public Domain

SAUFLEY, J.,
with whom, DANA and CALKINS, JJ., join, concurring.
[¶ 25] I concur with the result in this case because the District Court’s findings are supported in the record, see In re Denise M., 670 A.2d 390, 393 (Me.1996), because it is clear that Breauna has developed an attachment to her foster family which if broken, would actually cause her harm, see In re Ashley A., 679 A.2d 86, 89 (Me.1996), and because Breauna’s mother unfortunately delayed too long in getting her own life together sufficiently to provide a safe home for Breauna, see In re Serena C., 650 A.2d 1343, 1344-45 (Me.1994).
[¶26] I write separately, however, to address the egregious delays that occurred during this troubling process. The system failed this little girl and her family. Because of this failure, Breauna will be deprived of a life with the family that wanted her. This simply should not have occurred.
[¶ 27] In order to understand my concerns, a more detailed history of the process is necessary. In the midst of a troubled adolescence, Breauna’s mother left home when she was fourteen years old. On February 9, 1995, at the age of fifteen, she gave birth to Breauna, a child with multiple health problems. She lived briefly with the child’s father. Her own father, a serviceman then stationed in Italy, flew to Maine to be with his daughter after she gave birth and later suggested that his daughter and Breauna come back to live with him. She declined his invitation. Breauna’s health failed during her first year of life, and the Department took custody from the overwhelmed teenage mother in March of 1996, just a few weeks after Breauna’s first birthday. There is little doubt that the Department’s initial action in taking Breauna into its care was both necessary and appropriate.
[¶28] Breauna’s grandfather, who had already demonstrated his concern for his granddaughter by coming personally to Maine at the time of her birth and by supporting his daughter financially, made his interest known to the Department immediately after Breauna was placed in the Department’s custody and offered to take custody from the Department. He filed a formal motion to intervene in April of 1996 and participated consistently, either personally or through counsel, in the proceedings. By September of 1996, the guardian ad litem had gathered a significant amount of information regarding Breauna’s grandfather and recommended that the court consider transferring responsibility for Breauna to her grandfather.
[¶ 29] Department policy apparently requires that a home study be performed to gather the information necessary for the Department and the court to make an informed determination about the appropriateness of a placement with a relative. The Department therefore required the grandfather to submit to a home study of his new residence in Germany. To this end, the grandfather researched the matter and quickly located an individual quali*918fied to perform the DHS mandated home study.
[IT 301 The Department was apparently unwilhng or unable to expeditiously confirm the credentials of the person suggested for the job by the grandfather, and instead chose to search independently for a professional to perform the study. Without any clear reason, it took the Department one full year merely to begin the process of the home study by locating a suitable person. Ironically, the person chosen was the person suggested by the grandfather a year previously. The reason for the year long delay is never made clear in the record. To her credit, the caseworker testified straight forwardly that “It’s a very lengthy process. It’s a lot of paperwork. It’s a lot of shuffling. And there is no other excuse, other than it’s a long, lengthy process.”
[IT 31J That “long, lengthy process” resulted in the passage of a full year in Breauna’s life without movement toward a placement with her family.5 Even after the completion of the home study, quite favorable to the grandfather, the Department took no action to move toward a family placement. As the guardian ad li-tem stated in a report dated September 16,1997:
[I]t does appear that we have placed [the grandparents] in an extremely difficult position by delaying the Home Study and then penalizing them for that delay by using Breauna’s attachment to [her foster mother] as one of the reasons for maintaining the foster placement for one year.6
The guardian also recommended that Breauna have “a period of daily unsupervised contact” with her grandparents. Notwithstanding this recommendation, it took a request for hearing from the grandfather to bring the matter to the court’s attention. Fully six months after the initial recommendation, the court forced the Department to undertake reunification plans.
[¶ 32] At that hearing, the court (Goran-ites, J.) appropriately required an immediate and “intensive” reunification plan for the placement of Breauna with her grandfather. Unfortunately, by the time that plan was implemented in February of 1998 Breauna was three years old. She had been in the Department’s custody for exactly two years and was attached to her foster mother. The experts retained to draw up the intensive plan structured an eight-week introduction, during which Breauna and her grandfather would have two, two-hour supervised visits each week. Because of Breauna’s age, attachments, and fragility, the process was necessarily slow. The grandfather, who had informed the reunification team that he was unable to remain in Maine for longer than four weeks, became frustrated with the entire process and eventually abandoned efforts to cooperate with the Department. Breau-na’s mother, with whom the Department had temporarily suspended reunification efforts in order to concentrate on the grandfather, returned to Maine in August of 1998 to attempt reunification herself. Two weeks later, the Department filed a petition to terminate her parental rights.
[¶ 33] In termination of parental rights cases, the timeframe must be “measured from the child’s perspective.” In re Leona T., 609 A.2d 1157, 1159 (Me.1992). A one-year delay can be a lifetime from an infant’s perspective. In this ease, two years passed between the time the Department took Breauna into its care and the implementation of the intensive reunification plan. No child or family should have to wait that long simply because of a process *919that is “a lot of paperwork ... a lot of shuffling.”
[¶ 34] The Legislature recently responded to concerns about delays in permanency planning for children in foster care with the enactment of a comprehensive bill intended to assure more speedy resolutions for such children. See P.L.1997, ch. 715, § B-14. Particularly recognizing the harm that can be done to a child who has no permanent home, the Legislature mandated that, except in unusual circumstances, the Department move to terminate the parental rights of any child who has been in the Department’s care for “15 out of the most recent 22 months.” 22 M.R.S.A. § 4052(2-A)(A) (Supp.1998).7 Here, Breauna had been in care for 24 months before the Department made an effort to place her with her grandfather. It comes as no surprise that the effort would prove nearly impossible for out-of-state relatives after such a lengthy passage of time.
[¶ 35] I do not question the Department’s responsibility to assure that a prospective placement with a child’s relatives will be a safe and loving placement.8 The process of gathering that information, however, should be done expeditiously. Whether the delay was caused by the Department of Human Services in Maine, other components of the international child placement bureaucracy, or a combination of both,9 the delay proved fatal to the final efforts to place Breauna with her grandfather.
[¶ 36] To date, Breauna has spent over three and one-half years with the same foster family — nearly eighty per cent of her young life. Her mother’s inexperience and departure from the country as soon as Breauna was taken into custody combined to create a situation where she cannot now step back into Breauna’s life. There is little doubt that Breauna has grown attached to her foster family and that removing her from their care at this late date could be devastating. We simply cannot turn back the clock for Breauna.
[¶37] However, as the Department attempts to comply with the mandates created by the recent actions of the Legislature, all persons involved with child protective proceedings must attend to the child’s needs with much greater speed. Without such efforts by all involved, the loss of a family, sadly suffered by Breauna, may be repeated. Accordingly, I concur that the District Court’s decision is supported by the record, but I would urge that all involved work to assure that what happened to this family does not occur again.

. During this time the grandfather made efforts to maintain contact with Breauna. He flew back to Maine to visit Breauna in October of 1996, April and August of 1997, and January, February and March of 1998.

. See In re Justin T., 640 A.2d 737, 739 (Me.1994) (cautioning courts not to use the fact that the Department has restricted the relationship of a parent and a child as evidence that termination is in the child's best interest).

. This provision is one of many required to be in place in any state receiving federal payments for foster care and adoption assistance. See 42 U.S.C. § 671(16), § 675(5)(E) (1994 & Supp.1997).

. The Department did not act unreasonably in declining to turn Breauna over to her grandfather without first assuring that she would be safely cared for in his home. Once a child is actually in the legal custody of the Department, certain requirements must be met before the child may be placed with a relative. See 22 M.R.S.A. § 4005-B(4) (1992 & Supp.1998). Nor do I question the need for the Department to assure that the home offered by Breauna’s grandfather was a safe, loving home and one that did not contain the parenting deficits Breauna had experienced in her mother’s care.

. There are significant restrictions on the Department’s freedom to place a child in its custody in the home of any person not living in Maine. See, e.g., The Interstate Compact on Placement of Children, 22 M.R.S.A. § 4191-4297 (1992).