In re Z.P. CA4/3

FACTS

I. Minors’ Detention by the Juvenile Court

Minors first became involved with the juvenile court in April 2023, when the two oldest were attending elementary school and the youngest was less than a year old. Their parents had “been together on and off for about 20 years”—we will refer to them as Mother and Father. In March 2023, a month before this case started, Mother reportedly “dr[ove] erratically in a school parking lot with a baby in the back seat of the car in a car seat. Mother left the lot and returned 5 to 10 minutes later[,] entering the lot the wrong way [and positioning her vehicle to] fac[e a] school bus.” Her infant “was dirty,” and “Mother had smoke coming out of her mouth.” The eldest child “smelled like marijuana [and] reported he only shower[ed] once a week.” Seven months earlier, Mother had expressed “having intrusive thoughts of harming herself but no specific plan [or] intent” to act on them. “She said she had anxiety about her children going back to school” and could not “take her bipolar [disorder medication] while pregnant, so she smoke[d] marijuana to help her with the intrusive thoughts.” 1 All further undesignated statutory references are to the…