Court Opinion

ID: 9790914
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:01:20.145364+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:32.624388
License: Public Domain

GARFF, Judge
(concurring):
I write separately to emphasize the concern expressed in the main opinion, namely the inordinate amount of time it has taken *573to conclude these proceedings. In October 1985, DFS filed the initial neglect petition in juvenile court, and three years later, in November 1988, the juvenile court entered its final findings of fact and decree. DFS placed the children in foster care in October 1985, returned the children to the mother in March 1986, placed them temporarily in a shelter home in November 1986, and then placed them in a more permanent foster home a few days later. Uncharacteristically, but fortunately for the children, they have remained in this home, for the past three years.1 Reports indicate that the children have stabilized amazingly well in this home because both their physical and psychological needs have been attended to, and that they have bonded to their foster parents. Because the natural parents have been deprived of their parental rights, the children are now available for adoption. However, this portends an additional traumatic uprooting for the children unless the present foster home becomes an adoptive placement.
The main opinion quoted from In re C.Y., 765 P.2d 251, 256 (Utah Ct.App.1988): “Children cannot remain in limbo indefinitely where there is no reasonable likelihood of their parents gaining necessary parenting abilities.”2 Since 1985, these children have been in limbo while waiting for their mother to translate her good intentions into changed behavior. The decision to cut all ties with biological parents who seriously neglect the physical and emotional needs of their children should be made with all deliberate speed. Protracted limbo status, with back and forth movement between parents and multiple foster care placements is extremely injurious to children.3
Although the best interest of the child is the “polar star” in dependency and neglect matters, the rights of parents must also be assiduously protected. However, once neglect has been established, the children’s best interest must take priority over the parents’ interests. Here the record is replete with evidence showing the mother’s refusal to change her behavior in spite of repeated attempts by the State to assist her in these efforts. It is obvious that the focus was primarily on the mother’s needs, but equally obvious she was not capable of change. Neglect was initially established in 1985, yet it took three years before the final decision was made to permanently separate parents and children. When parents do not quickly get their acts together, children should not continue to suffer. Yet two psychologists, who appeared to be totally oblivious to the history of the case and the repeated efforts to correct the causes of neglect over this protracted period of time, blithely continued to advocate further delay at the conclusion of the trial, recommending the same treatment previously attempted over the past three years. Their evaluations were devoid of any interest or concern for the needs of the children and merely catalogued, once again, the needs of the mother. At some reasonable point in time, for the sake of the children, the adults who are in control, whether they are psychologists, social workers, attorneys, or judges, must say, “Enough!” Children need a sense of belonging, continuity, and permanency. Such needs are *574usually not satisfied in temporary care situations.
One further comment on the procedural delays: It is noted that after the petition for termination of parental rights was filed on November 13,1987, it still took a year to reach a final conclusion. The trial on the petition commenced June 27, 1988, took five days, and was finally concluded on September 26, 1988. The decree was entered on November 14, 1988. These procedural delays, coupled with the “incredible patience” on the part of DFS in rehabilitating the mother, only served to increase the risk of additional emotional trauma to the children.
When the law intrudes, as it does in neglect proceedings, adult decision makers have an obligation to understand the urgency of these needs and to move the system toward their actualization as quickly as possible. It may be necessary to rearrange court calendars to permit the expeditious completion of a trial on consecutive days rather than extend it over a period of weeks or months. It may be necessary for caseworkers and prosecutors to face up to the reality, early-on, that emotional and environmental deficits make it virtually impossible for positive change to take place with some neglecting parents. And, it may be necessary for child care experts to recognize that what they perceive to be a logical treatment regime may not be possible with existing resources, coupled with the lack of motivation, desire or ability on the part of parents to cooperate with a given treatment plan.
Simply stated, time is of the essence in the lives of children such as M.H. and P.H. They cannot afford, emotionally, three years in limbo.

. It is assumed that they have continued in this placement during the course of this appeal.

. Websters Third New International Dictionary, 1312 (1986) defines limbo as "a place or state of neglect or oblivion.” In medieval Latin, limbo was a region on the border of hell. It was the place for those who never had a chance, or for souls barred from heaven through no fault of their own.

. Children, with their urgent need for security and stability, have their own sense of time.
Children ... are not adults in miniature. They are beings per se, different from their elders in their mental nature, their functioning, their understanding of events, and their reactions to them....
Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud, Albert Solnit, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child 2.13 (1973).
Consequently, they respond to any threat to their emotional security with fantastic anxieties, denial, or distortion of reality, reversal or displacement of feelings — reactions which are no help for coping, but rather put them at the mercy of events.
Id. at 2.12.