Los Angeles County Deptartment of Children & Family Services v. Margaret Z.

This is a dependency case in which a drug-addicted mother was arrested in California and extradited to Florida. Her nine-month-old daughter, who tested positive for opiates and cocaine because her mother was breastfeeding her while using drugs, was placed with foster parents. At the mother’s request, her sister did everything she could to have the child *1104 placed with her in Florida, but the Florida child welfare authorities refused to expedite the process and almost a year elapsed before the Florida family obtained a foster care license. Meanwhile and inevitably, the child (now almost three years old and a complete stranger to her Florida family) bonded with her foster parents who are eager to adopt her. The dependency court, placing the child’s best interests first, terminated the mother’s parental rights and designated the foster parents as the child’s prospective adoptive family. The mother (still incarcerated in Florida) appeals. We affirm.

FACTS

A.

Margaret Z. gave birth to Lauren Z. in January 2005. Nine months later, a police officer investigating a report of drug activity found Margaret, Lauren and a man in a parked car, ran a check on Margaret’s driver’s…

I dissent on the ground that the dependency court erred in rejecting placement with Margaret’s sister Fanny and terminating Margaret’s parental rights. As discussed below, the primary rationale for the majority’s decision is that so much time had elapsed since the commencement of the dependency proceeding that, by the time of the dependency court’s last hearing, Lauren had bonded with her foster parents and thus would be better off with them than with her natural mother. The majority’s approach gives far too much weight to the amount of time that a child resides with a foster parent, gives inadequate weight to facts that warranted placement of Lauren with her aunt’s family, and ignores the insidious effect on the child welfare system of using the failure of the system itself as justification for the termination of parental rights.

I

The paramount goal in the initial phase of dependency proceedings is family reunification. (In re Precious J. (1996) 42 Cal.App.4th 1463, 1472 [ 50 Cal.Rptr.2d 385 ] [“ ‘Family preservation, with the attendant reunification plan and reunification services, is the first priority when child dependency proceedings are commenced. [Citation.]’ ”].) The…