N.N.

BACKGROUND

K.N. came to the attention of the Contra Costa County Children Family Services Bureau (the Bureau) at birth, when the Bureau received a report that her mother tested positive for methamphetamine and nearly died during childbirth due to complications from chronic drug use. At the time, there were open dependency proceedings pending concerning K.N.’s two older siblings that the Bureau had initiated two years earlier when the younger of the two siblings was born, because then too mother had tested positive for methamphetamines (and so had the baby). K.N.’s siblings had been declared dependents, and their cases had been transferred from Contra Costa County to Madera County where the proceedings had been pending for about a year and a half. At the time of the referral concerning K.N., a hearing had been set in Madera County to terminate mother’s and father’s parental rights over the two older siblings (then toddlers, ages 2 and 3). Father and mother did not live together. Mother lived in Antioch, California with a friend and father lived in Coarsegold, California with mother’s father. Father, who was present at the hospital when the referral was investigated, reported to…