In Re Lm

Silvano B. Marchesi, County Counsel, and Esther Milbury, Deputy County Counsel, for Objector and Respondent.

Appellant L.M. was declared a ward of the juvenile court under Welfare and Institutions Code section 602 [1] and was placed in a Southern California residential treatment program several hundred miles away from his home. The goal of his case plan was reunification with his father and monthly visits were ordered as part of the plan. Appellant filed a motion to require the Contra Costa County Probation Department (Department) to pay his father's transportation costs to and from the monthly visits. The motion was denied and this appeal follows.

(1) We agree with appellant that a juvenile court hearing a delinquency case has the power, under the appropriate circumstances, to order a supervising agency to financially assist a parent who lacks the financial means to travel to and from visitation. We affirm the juvenile court's order denying the motion for travel expenses in this case because appellant failed to make a threshold showing that his father was unable to afford the cost of the trips to and from visitation.

In May 2007, when he was 12 years old,…