The Court of Appeals of Oregon reversed the juvenile court’s permanency judgment changing the plan for his daughter from reunification to adoption, finding that the Department of Human Services (DHS) did not make reasonable efforts to reunify appellant-father with his child. Here, during the last year of the case, father had been in prison but had made significant efforts to discuss with DHS ways that he could see his child, but father claimed that DHS ignored these requests. During the permanency hearing, the DHS caseworker testified that “DHS had decided against developing the relationship between father and [child].” At the conclusion of the hearing, the juvenile court concluded that DHS had made reasonable efforts to reunify; father appealed. The court of appeals noted that it has previously held that the “mere fact of a parent’s incarceration may not ‘serve as a basis for excusing DHS from making reasonable efforts,’” and “DHS must make reasonable efforts towards both parents in a case, even when one parent is more accessible than another.” The court of appeals held that DHS did not make reasonable efforts to reunify the child with father as it made no efforts to assist father in developing a relationship with the child, other than forwarding letters to her and it impermissibly focused solely on mother because she was regarded as a more viable candidate for reunification. Therefore, the court reversed the juvenile court’s order changing the plan from reunification to adoption and remanded the case for further proceedings.
Cite: No. A156255; 2014 Ore. App. LEXIS 1651 (Ore. Ct. App., Nov. 26, 2014)
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