Court Opinion

ID: 9572614
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:43:12.499577+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:33:39.532379
License: Public Domain

SACKETT, Judge
(dissenting).
I dissent. Over twelve months ago N.M.W., a happy, healthy five-year-old child was removed from her biological mother’s care and placed in foster care where she remains today. The majority has determined the child must remain in foster care.
The reason for the removal, and the decision the child should remain in foster care, is that the mother is an inadequate housekeeper and does not keep what the majority terms a sanitary house. I agree with the majority that the record clearly supports a finding this mother is an extremely poor housekeeper. I agree with the majority it would be in the child’s best interests to live in a cleaner house. However, the house could have been cleaned without taking the child from her mother. I do not, however, feel removal from the parental home was in the child’s best interests and feel the matter should be remanded to direct reasonable efforts be utilized to allow the child to return home. Houses can be cleaned, but the trauma a child experiences when he or she is removed from the only parental home he or she has ever known can cause emotional scars that can last a lifetime.
There is strong authority that parenting deficiencies may best be addressed by leaving the child in the home, that removals from biological families are traumatic for children, and that foster care placement is wrought with problems. See Wald, State Intervention on Behalf of “Neglected” Children: Standards for Removal of Children From Their Homes, Monitoring the Status of Children in Foster Care and Termination of Parental Rights, 28 Stan.L.Rev. 623, 638 (1976). Additionally, the difficulties I see occur with foster placements convince me the state, despite conscientious efforts by dedicated persons, is ill-equipped to parent.
Our legislature has recognized that children are best served by remaining in their home and requires reasonable efforts be made to allow them to remain there. Fed*483eral legislation providing states’ reimbursement for foster care directs that reasonable efforts be made to allow a child to remain in his or her home, and a state’s failure to do so can result in the loss of funds for foster care reimbursement.
To apply reasonable efforts first requires identifying the problem. The problems identified by the majority are the poor housekeeping conditions in the home, and the inability of the mother to correct these deficiencies. After identifying the problem, the next step is to look at the family as a unit and determine what it takes to correct this problem.
If this mother came from a higher economic level, she could do as many parents do who have neither the desire or ability to clean their houses. She could hire a cleaning service. I would consider reasonable efforts to entail granting this mother assistance with cleaning her house and keeping it clean. A few hours of cleaning service would have cost the state less than the judicial time and court appointed attorney fees spent to litigate the adequacy of this woman’s housekeeping skills through the state’s appellate courts. And most importantly, the child would not have suffered the trauma of removal and the insecurities that come in foster care.
The majority decision also concerns me because it may be interpreted as setting standards for housekeeping that need to be met before we allow parents to keep their children. If I were convinced: (1) only people in clean houses were good parents, (2) for a child to be healthy it is necessary for him or her to be raised in a sanitary house, and (3) a child suffers less by being removed from his or her parents than from growing up in a dirty house, I could agree with the majority. I am not convinced of these things. I consider parents who devote time and attention to their children, who allow their children to have pets and projects in their home, and who welcome their children’s friends in their home are contributing substantially to their children’s emotional development. Parents who seek to direct their financial and emotional resources in these directions may have few resources left to keep a sanitary house.
If we concentrate too much on sanitary houses, we may take children away from good and adequate parents, and we may use energies and resources that would best be directed to helping families and to identifying children who suffer serious abuse.