Rule 5.695.Findings and orders of the court—disposition

Seven outcomes are available at disposition. The court may dismiss the petition with reasons in the minutes; place the child under a program of supervision with services; appoint a legal guardian without declaring dependency, or declare dependency and appoint one, ordering letters of guardianship to issue once the guardian signs the affirmation — letters that are not confidential juvenile documents; declare dependency and leave the child at home with services; do the same while limiting the parent’s control; or declare dependency and remove physical custody. On removal it may, after stating the factual basis on the record or in writing, place the child with a noncustodial parent and end jurisdiction with a final custody order, place with a noncustodial parent while providing services, or make a placement order and consider visitation rights for the grandparents.

Any limitation on parental control must be clear and specific. Where a parent keeps physical custody under court supervision, they must be ordered to take part in child welfare or other designated services. And the court must consider whether to limit the right to make educational or developmental-services decisions, following the educational-rights rules if it does.

Removal carries a heightened standard. A child cannot be removed from a parent or guardian they lived with when the petition was filed unless the court makes one or more of the statutory findings by clear and convincing evidence, and cannot be removed from a parent they did not live with unless the court makes both of the applicable findings by that same standard. Either way the court must consider and expressly find whether reasonable efforts to prevent or eliminate the need for removal were made.

Family finding is checked again here. If the child is removed, the court must consider and determine whether the social worker exercised due diligence in identifying, locating and notifying kin — weighing the mandatory activities and, if it chooses, the additional ones — and must document its determination on the record. Where disposition is continued the court may set a hearing 30 days from removal for this purpose. Where diligence is lacking, it may order the work done, excluding anyone the social worker has identified as inappropriate to notify, and require a report.

Reunification services are the default. Unless the court finds they need not be provided, it must order the county to provide services to the child and the mother and statutorily presumed parent, or the legal guardian. Services for a biological father may be ordered where the court determines the child will benefit. Where services are ordered after removal, the court must order visitation — as frequent as possible, consistent with the child’s well-being. Services are not provided where the parent has relinquished the child and the relinquishment is filed with the state, or where a guardian has been appointed.

Where the court denies services to every otherwise-eligible parent, it must set a permanency hearing within 120 days, order the social worker to give the caregiver a copy of the child’s birth certificate, and order a certified copy given to a child of 16 or older unless that would be inappropriate.

Setting that hearing is not appealable. Review comes only through an extraordinary writ — a notice of intent on form JV-820 and a petition on form JV-825, or their equivalents. The setting order can be reviewed on appeal after the permanency hearing only if a writ was timely sought and was summarily denied or otherwise not decided on the merits, and review is then limited to issues raised in that writ petition on an adequate record. Missing the deadline, failing to address the issues substantively, or failing to support them with an adequate record forecloses appeal.

So the court must say so out loud. When it sets a permanency hearing it advises everyone present orally, and everyone absent by first-class mail or electronic service, that a writ must be sought to preserve any right of review. Notice to an absent party goes out within 24 hours. Copies of both forms must be available in the courtroom and must accompany every mailed notice. And where the hearing is one at which termination of parental rights will be recommended, electronic service may only supplement first-class mail, never replace it.

Two more things. On removal under either statute the court must state the facts behind its decision and warn the parents that their rights may be terminated if custody is not returned within 6 months of disposition or 12 months of the child’s entry into foster care, whichever applies. And it may not set a permanency hearing directed at one parent alone unless that parent is the only surviving parent, the other parent’s rights have been terminated by a court of competent jurisdiction, or the other parent has relinquished custody to the county.