Poverty Not Enough to Terminate Parental Rights
The Fourth District Court of Appeals in California has ruled that there are not sufficient grounds to deprive a mother of parental rights to her children simply because she is impoverished, homeless or has less than ideal living arrangements, according to a report by the Metropolitan News Company.
The district's Division Three found that a trial court erred when it terminated a woman's parental rights to her two children based solely on the grounds that she was unable to provide stable, suitable housing. The order was overturned and the district's Division Eight upheld the decision that poverty alone is not a valid basis for the juvenile court to assert jurisdiction.
A juvenile dependency petition was filed in 2005 by the Orange County Social Services Agency, alleging that a woman who had previously admitted to the agency that she was homeless had physically abused her two children who were five and two years old at the time. It was also alleged that the mother left the children in the care of another person without any means of support, medical consent or information about her whereabouts or when she would return.
The Orange County Social Services Agency's petition also alleged that the children's father had abused the mother in the presence of the children and that he had also abused one of the children.
The children were taken from the mother and placed in a foster home. Orange Superior Court Commissioner Dennis Keough sustained the allegations and found that he had jurisdiction in the matter. He declared the children dependents of the juvenile court and ordered reunification services. Keough dismissed an allegation in the petition that the mother was homeless and unable to provide a stable residence, because he noted that this fact alone would not support an exercise of jurisdiction.
The mother managed to comply with all of the reunification services required by her case plan. At an 18-month review hearing in February 2007, the social worker in the case testified that the mother's housing situation was the only issue preventing the children from being returned to her. The mother had found a place to live, however the Social Services Agency's policy is that all adults living in a home had to be fingerprinted before the children could be returned for an overnight visit or a 60-day trial. The mother moved several times, but each time she obtained new housing, at least one adult resident refused to be fingerprinted or had a criminal history. The social worker said that the mother was completely willing to continue trying to find a place to live that conformed to the agency's requirements.
Keough ended the reunification services at the Social Services Agency's request. The children were then placed with a prospective adoptive family and another hearing was held in December 2007, during which Keough found the children to be adoptable and terminated the mother's parental rights.
The mother appealed the decision and the Division Three panel found that the trial court erred when it failed to consider and conduct a hearing to determine if the father of the two children was fit to regain custody of the children. The panel cited an obligation on the part of judges and social workers to guard against “the influence of class and life style biases,” and found that poverty alone does not make a person an unfit parent.
The panel also faulted the Social Services Agency for failing to assist the mother with finding acceptable living arrangements. The social worker in the case did not get the mother's signature on a family unification referral that might have moved her higher on the low-income housing list and instead simply recommended that the mother look in the Pennysaver for housing.
The juvenile court was ordered to conduct a hearing to address whether or not any other legally sufficient grounds existed that would make placing the children back in the mother's care detrimental to them. In the absence of any such grounds, the children were to be returned to the mother.
