Court Opinion

ID: 9896921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-14 19:03:56.133748+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:57.594372
License: Public Domain

Filed 11/14/23 In re Nolan L. CA2/8
   NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS
California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions
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IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

                         SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

                                      DIVISION EIGHT

 In re NOLAN L., a Person Coming                                   B327022
 Under the Juvenile Court Law.
 LOS ANGELES COUNTY                                                Los Angeles County
 DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN                                            Super. Ct. No. 17CCJP00940B
 AND FAMILY SERVICES,

           Plaintiff and Respondent,

           v.

 RANDY L.,

           Defendant and Appellant.

      APPEAL from order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles
County. Julie Fox Blackshaw, Judge. Affirmed.
      Megan Turkat Schirn, under appointment by the Court of
Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
      Dawyn R. Harrison, County Counsel, Kim Nemoy,
Assistant County Counsel, and David Michael Miller, Senior
Deputy County Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
                        ____________________
       Appellant Randy L. is the father of minor Nolan L. Nolan’s
mother is not a party to this appeal. Father appeals denial, after
a full hearing, of his second Welfare and Institutions Code1
section 388 petition for further reunification services. We
conclude the juvenile court acted within its discretion in denying
father’s petition, despite his recent sobriety and progress in his
drug treatment, given father’s history of relapsing into drug
abuse. Accordingly, we affirm.
                          BACKGROUND
       Nolan came to the attention of respondent Los Angeles
County Department of Children and Family Services (the
Department) in September 2020, when he was just six months
old. Father, while under the influence of methamphetamine,
thought he heard a loud bang in his house. He rushed Nolan out
of the house, drove him to another location, and called law
enforcement to check on mother. Law enforcement found mother
safe. She explained “this was the second time father ha[d] left
the home with [Nolan] due to him hallucinating while on
methamphetamine.”
       Shortly thereafter, law enforcement took Nolan into
protective custody under exigent circumstances without a
warrant. He was placed in the home of Mr. and Ms. B. (the
B. family), where he has remained ever since.
       The juvenile court exercised jurisdiction under section 300,
subdivisions (b) and (j). As relevant here, allegations against
father included that he endangered Nolan by abusing
methamphetamine (which he used while caring for Nolan); failing
to protect Nolan from mother’s substance abuse; and failing to

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

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address his own mental and emotional problems, including by
failing to take prescribed psychotropic medications.
       Father, who is now in his 40’s, began using drugs when he
was 16 years old. According to paternal grandfather, father has
spent his entire adult life cycling through periods of drug abuse
and sobriety. Father notes he was sober for approximately seven
years—the same amount of time he spent in prison for burglary
beginning in 2011. Otherwise, at no point has father managed to
stay sober for a full year.
       Father also has a mental health diagnosis for which he was
prescribed an antidepressant. Father does not know the
diagnosis and admitted not taking his prescribed medication as
instructed.
       The juvenile court removed Nolan from father and mother
and ordered reunification services. Father’s reunification
services included a full drug and alcohol program, weekly drug
testing, drug counseling, parenting programs, and conjoint and
individual counseling.
       At the six-month review hearing in April 2021, the juvenile
court found the parents had failed to substantially comply with
their case plans. For his part, father had participated in
substance abuse and individual counseling, but was terminated
from conjoint counseling due to excessive absences. Further,
after generally testing on schedule and receiving only negative
test results for four months, he stopped submitting to drug tests.
He admitted he skipped testing because he was using
methamphetamine. The juvenile court terminated reunification
services and set a section 366.26 hearing.
       Meanwhile, Nolan was thriving in the home of the
B. family.

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       In December 2021, father filed a section 388 petition
requesting six months of additional family reunification services.
Father identified as changed circumstances his “substantive
progress in drug treatment services,” including enrollment in a
residential substance abuse treatment program and further
participation in individual counseling and related services. With
the Department’s support, the juvenile court granted father’s
petition in February 2022 and ordered return to home as Nolan’s
permanent plan.
       But in March 2022, father left his sober living facility and
stopped drug testing. He was terminated from his drug program
the following month due to excessive absences. He resumed
using illegal drugs.
       He returned to his sober living facility on June 1, 2022, and
resumed drug testing. He did not reenroll in individual
counseling. He did reenroll in his outpatient drug program but
was making slow progress to completion. By July 2022,
five months into his renewed reunification services, father had
completed only a quarter of the classes required to receive his
certificate of completion.
       In August 2022, the juvenile court found father’s progress
in the court-ordered programs insubstantial, and again
terminated family reunification services. The court noted
father’s failure to drug test, his recent reenrollment in a
substance abuse program, his inconsistent and poor quality of
visits with Nolan, and his inability to separate from mother, who
was still using drugs, as some of the reasons continued
reunification efforts were not in Nolan’s best interests. The court
set another section 366.26 hearing for December 2022.
       In December 2022, father filed a second section 388 petition
requesting a third round of family reunification services with

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Nolan. As changed circumstances, father identified completion of
a parenting program and substantial progress in his drug
treatment programming. He continued to reside in a sober living
facility. The juvenile court set father’s second section 388
petition for hearing.
       The Department opposed the petition. It acknowledged
father completed a substance abuse program in December 2022
and continued participation in individual counseling and other
services at his sober living facility. However, father declined to
participate in the after-care program offered at his treatment
facility and had not participated in any conjoint counseling
sessions with mother. In the two years Nolan had been with the
B. family—80 percent of his life—father had failed to complete
his court-ordered case plan. And all the while, Nolan continued
to thrive in the care of the B. family.
       The juvenile court denied father’s petition. It commended
father for his progress but considered his circumstances to be
merely changing and not truly changed. Concerned father had
not shown enough progress to warrant another round of
reunification services, the court determined Nolan’s best interests
would be served by proceeding to a permanent plan for Nolan and
the B. family.
       Father timely appealed.
       Father reports that, subsequent to his notice of appeal, the
juvenile court declined to terminate his parental rights on the
basis that the beneficial parental relationship exception under
section 366.26, subdivision (c)(1)(B)(i) applied.2

2    We grant father’s motion for judicial notice of juvenile court
minute orders purportedly evidencing a finding regarding the
parental benefit exception. (Evid. Code, § 452, subd. (d), § 459,

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                         DISCUSSION
1.     Governing Law
       Section 388, subdivision (a)(1), authorizes the parent of a
dependent child to, “upon grounds of change of circumstance or
new evidence,” petition the juvenile court “for a hearing to
change, modify, or set aside any order of court previously made.”
(Ibid.)
       “To support a section 388 petition, the change in
circumstances must be substantial.” (In re Ernesto R. (2014)
230 Cal.App.4th 219, 223.) It must be “ ‘of such significant
nature that it requires a setting aside or modification of the
challenged prior order.’ ” (In re Jamika W. (1997) 54 Cal.App.4th
1446, 1451.)
       Moreover, it “ ‘is not enough for a parent to show just a
genuine change of circumstances under the statute. The parent
must show that the undoing of the prior order would be in the
best interests of the child.’ ” (In re D.R. (2011) 193 Cal.App.4th
1494, 1512.) “[A]fter reunification services have terminated, a
parent’s petition for either an order returning custody or
reopening reunification efforts must establish how such a change
will advance the child’s need for permanency and stability.”
(In re J.C. (2014) 226 Cal.App.4th 503, 527.)
       Changing, but not changed, circumstances do not promote
the best interests of the child when the proposed modification
would entail delaying a child’s permanent placement. (In re
Casey D. (1999) 70 Cal.App.4th 38, 47, 49, disapproved of on

subd. (a).) The minute orders he attaches make no reference to
the beneficial relationship exception but do reflect that the
juvenile court ordered the Department to assess the permanent
plan of legal guardianship.

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another ground by In re Caden C. (2021) 11 Cal.5th 614, 636,
fn. 5.)
2.      The Juvenile Court Did Not Abuse Its Discretion in
        Denying Father’s Second Section 388 Petition
        Because we review a juvenile court’s denial of a section 388
petition for abuse of discretion (In re Jasmon O. (1994) 8 Cal.4th
398, 415), the question before us is simple: was the juvenile
court’s denial of father’s section 388 petition arbitrary, capricious
or patently absurd? (See In re Raymundo B. (1988)
203 Cal.App.3d 1447, 1456.) The answer is plainly “no.”
        In arguing the juvenile court abused its discretion, father
attempts to distinguish adverse authority by claiming “[t]his is
not a case of a parent’s brief period of sobriety against a lengthy
history of addiction.” We disagree. Father had a three-decades
long history of substance abuse. During that time, he repeatedly
sought help, got sober, and then relapsed into drug use. That
pattern repeated during this case.
        Father’s history of relapses and failed reunification
attempts supplied ample reason to doubt father would remain
sober and succeed in reunifying if given yet another opportunity
to try. (See, e.g., In re Cliffton B. (2000) 81 Cal.App.4th 415, 423-
424 [no abuse of discretion in denying petition where the father
was sober for 200 days but had a long history of drug addiction
and multiple relapses]; In re Amber M. (2002) 103 Cal.App.4th
681, 686-687 [no abuse of discretion in denying petition where the
mother was sober for 372 days but had a long history of drug
addiction and multiple relapses]; In re Ernesto R., supra,
230 Cal.App.4th at p. 223 [no abuse of discretion in denying
petition despite the mother’s recent sobriety and completion of
drug treatment program; these were changing, not changed,
circumstances in the context of a long history of drug relapses].)

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        And the record supplied ample reason to conclude that,
rather than affording father another opportunity to reunify,
Nolan would be better off proceeding to a permanent plan in the
care of the B. family, with whom he had spent most of his life.
“ ‘Childhood does not wait for the parent to become adequate’ ”
(In re Ernesto R., supra, 230 Cal.App.4th at p. 224), and
“ ‘[c]hildren should not be required to wait until their parents
grow up’ ” (id. at p. 225).
        That the juvenile court, after denying father’s second
section 388 petition, found a beneficial relationship between
father and Nolan does not affect the analysis. First, father’s
opening brief fails to address why the usual rule that we may
consider only matters that were part of the record at the time the
judgment was entered does not bar our consideration of the
juvenile court’s later findings. (Reserve Insurance Co. v. Pisciotta
(1982) 30 Cal.3d 800, 813.) In any event, father intimates only
that the beneficial relationship finding evidenced that
reunification would be in Nolan’s best interests. But it has no
impact upon the juvenile court’s determination that father’s
circumstances were insufficiently changed to warrant relief
under section 388 or our conclusion that this was not an abuse of
discretion.
                            DISPOSITION
        The juvenile court’s order denying father’s section 388
petition is affirmed.

                                     GRIMES, J.
      WE CONCUR:

                        STRATTON, P. J.          VIRAMONTES, J.

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