Authorities can hold more than one hearing to decide a child’s permanent legal status, a state court has ruled in the case of children whose mother didn’t comply with an initial plan aimed at keeping the family together.

Two permanency hearings can be held as long as the first takes place within a year after children are first removed from a home, as required by law, a three-judge Court of Appeals panel ruled.

In the case decided Dec. 27, state Child Protective Services workers took temporary custody of four children after they and their mother were taken to Winslow Memorial Hospital on July 12, 2003.

According to petitions filed by the state on July 17, 2003, for two of the woman’s children, the woman was screaming incoherently at the hospital, admitted methamphetamine use, verbally and physically abused her children, threatened to kill them and had no means to support the children because she was homeless and unemployed.

During initial proceedings, the woman agreed to participate in a psychological evaluation, psychiatric treatment, urinalysis testing, substance abuse treatment, parent aide services and visitation.

During a June 22, 2004, permanency hearing held within a year after the children’s removal, the juvenile court ruled that the woman hadn’t complied with the case plan but that the goal of family reunification was appropriate.

However, that changed in September 2004 when the juvenile court ruled that the goal should be severance and adoption. That led to a second permanency hearing on Dec. 7, 2004.

After a jury found last February that severance was appropriate and that termination of the parent-child relationship was in the best interest of the children, the woman appealed on grounds that the state wasn’t authorized to have more than one permanency hearing.

The Court of Appeals concluded otherwise, ruling that there was nothing to preclude a second hearing.

It was the woman’s failure to comply with the case plan that caused the juvenile court to change its course and move toward severance, Judge Daniel A. Barker wrote in the Court of Appeals ruling. “The court gave (the woman) more, rather than fewer, opportunities to assert her parental rights.”

FYI

The case is Veronica T. vs. Arizona Department of Economic Security, 1 CA-JV 05-0038.

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