"IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD"

Parental Rights II
Callie Thornton

"IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD"
Are you and your child victims of CPS?
Did CPS take your child from you and put them in protective custody?
Do you know why they took your child?
Are you a victim of false allegations?
While trying to work a case plan, has your case worker ever said things to you regarding the foster parents wanting to adopt your child or something to that effect?
Did the case worker do this repetitiously in an attempt to upset you enough to set you back on working the case plan?
Did CPS and the court system lead you and your child to believe that you were working toward reunification?
Did cps, whether you had done anything wrong or not, file a termination of parental rights petition against you?
Were you told it was only to get an extension or for some reason other than termination?
Did the judge terminate your parental rights to your child?
Before permanently severing the parental rights to your child, for the rest of your life, had you been tried and convicted of child abuse or any child neglect crime in a criminal court of law?
Did the judge and CPS still allow you and your child visitation until the TPR?
Did your court appointed attorney help you or help the Plaintiff's case more?
Was your judge the same one you had been in front of since the beginning?
Did the judge at any time seem to be bias at all toward you?
Was this “one” person the judge, the jury and the executioner in your case?
Did your case worker and/or others have smiles on their faces during your sentencing?
Did the case worker offer you any services at all to help you through the grief of losing your child?
Has your child been adopted by the foster parents?
Did you know that this was planned from the time they took your child?
Did you know that they would have just as soon stopped visitation and contact between you and your child after filing the TPR petition?


At what point should reunification services be discontinued? The best practice is to continue to offer reunification services until the petition to terminate parental rights isheard unless there is a specific finding by the Court that continuation of reunification efforts is, in fact, detrimental to the child. This is a high threshold that should not be compromised. Discontinuation of reunification services is not a condition precedent to the filing of a termination action and, in fact, discontinuation of reunification services prior to termination seems to be in disfavor with the Court of Appeals. The Workgroup believes that, unless actual harm would result to the child, reunification services should continue to be offered up to the time parental rights are terminated. There was some concern expressed about this practice making for unnecessary work for the Agency and the panels. However, the reunification plan is already in place and all that has to be done is to monitor progress. Also, in most of these cases, the parents are not, in fact, accessing the services offered anyway, so there is not a lot of work involved in offering and monitoring services. We believe that the value in offering the services and the impact that may have in the appellate courts outweighs the disadvantages of continuing to offer services. This approach also allows us to avoid the necessity of having a permanency hearing except in cases where it is absolutely necessary, that is where actual detriment to the child can be clearly established. Keep in mind also that, if the time frames proposed herein are met, we are not talking about continuing to offer the services for an extended period of time.

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