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Juvenile Dependency

What Kinds of Legal Hearings are Held in Juvenile Dependency Court?
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A hearing is when you go to court. This section talks about the hearings in Juvenile Dependency Court:

• What happens at the first hearing?
• What happens at the jurisdiction hearing?
• What happens at the disposition hearing?
• What is a 6-month review hearing?
• What happens at the 12-month review hearing?
• What happens at the 18-month review hearing?
• What happens at other review hearings?
• What happens at the implementation hearing?
• How can it end?

Click here for a chart to follow as you read.

• The court gives the parents a notice about what is going on (the “proceedings”).
• The parents get a copy of the petition and any other papers for the case.
• The court tells the parents what can happen in a dependency case.
• The lawyers for both sides (called “parties”) introduce themselves to the court.
• The court writes down the names of the child’s relatives, if possible.
• The court confirms who the parents of the child are, if possible. This is called Parentage.

The court decides if the child should stay with a parent or live somewhere else for now.

If the court takes the child away from a parent, it can make visitation orders so the parent can see the child. The court will also tell the parents where they can get help so the child can come back to them.

The court also decides if the Department of Family and Children’s Services made a “reasonable effort” to keep the child with the parents

What happens at the jurisdiction hearing?

At the jurisdictional hearing the court decides if what the petition says is true. The court has 3 ways to do this:

• The parents or guardians admit the petition is true.
   
• The parents or guardians don’t disagree with the petition (called “submission”).
   
• The parents or guardians dispute, or contest the petition. Both sides give the court evidence at a hearing. Then, the court finds the petition to be true or not.

Before the judge accepts an admission or submission, the court has to be sure the parents want to give up (waive) their right to a trial. This means they give up the right to: see, hear and question witnesses, bring their own witnesses, testify or stay silent.

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• Dismiss the case.
   
• Let the child live with a parent on “family maintenance”. This means that a social worker and the court supervise the child.
   
• Take the child away from the parents and send to live with a relative, foster parent or group home and offer the parents family reunification services.
   
• Take the child away from the parents and not offer family reunification services to get their child back. There will be a hearing in 120 days to decide where the child will live permanently.

The court won’t let the parents try family reunification services if:

• The child or a brother or sister has been seriously abused or killed.
• The parent had another child taken away by the court.
• The parents tried family reunification services and they were cancelled.
• The parents have serious drug problems that aren’t being treated.

There are other reasons the court can skip family reunification services and order a permanent plan for the child.
 

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What happens at other review hearings?

The court can have other hearings to:

• Check up on the child,
• To see how the social worker is working with the family, or
• To see how the parents are doing with their case plan.

• End the parents’ rights so the child can be adopted,
• Name a legal guardian for the child, or
• Put the child with a relative, foster parent or in a group home for a long time

The most permanent plan for the child is adoption. The second choice is legal guardianship. The last choice permanent plan is long-term placement. This is the least likely to give the child a permanent home.
 

There are different ways for a dependency case to end:

• Case is dismissed. Court makes custody orders
• Adoption
• Concurrent planning
• Appeals/Writs

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• Case is dismissed. Court makes custody orders:
  
  If the child lives with a parent and the court doesn’t need to supervise the child anymore, it can dismiss the case. It will make juvenile court custody orders. These are like the custody and visitation from family court judges.
  
  If there is a disagreement about these orders later on, you can go to the Family Court at Park Center Plaza where your order was filed and mediate the disagreement or have a Family Court Judge hear your problem.
   
• Adoption:
  Adoption hearings are in the Dependency Court. They are for children whose parents lost their rights and who live in adoptive homes.
   
• Concurrent planning:
  Concurrent planning means that 2 plans are happening at the same time. It’s very important to find a permanent home for a child as soon as possible. So, when a child is taken from the parents, the social service agency can put children in homes that want to adopt them. If the child can’t go back to live with the parents after a certain amount of time, the child is already in a permanent home.
   
• Appeals/Writs:
  You can appeal a judge’s decision if you fought (or “contested”) the petition. Talk to your lawyer about how to file an appeal.

In some cases you have to file a form called “extraordinary writ to the Court of Appeals”. Talk to your lawyer about this.