Child Advocacy: Permanency plans consider child as an individual

When a child is in the care and custody of the state of Maryland in a Child in Need of Assistance case, that child must have a permanency plan, which is determined by the juvenile court.

“The permanency plan is an integral part of the statutory scheme designed to expedite the movement of Maryland’s children from foster care to a permanent living, and hopefully, family arrangement.”

One of the most important roles of the court is to determine the permanency plan for the child who is in the care and custody of the local Department of Social Services.

Under Maryland law, permanency plans are to be determined with a heavy emphasis on the child’s perspective and on the child’s lived experience of the world.

The court determines the permanency plan for a child at permanency planning hearings, where the court shall “Change the permanency plan if a change in the permanency plan would be in the child’s best interest.”

The presumptive plan for CINAs is reunification with a parent, which the court should change if there are “weighty circumstances indicating that reunification with the parent is not in the child’s best interest.”

To determine the permanency plan that is in the child’s best interest, the Court must consider six specific child-centered factors.

These factors include a strong emphasis on the child’s experience, perspective, bonds, and attachments.

These factors are “(i) the child’s ability to be safe and healthy in the home of the child’s parent; (ii) the child’s attachment and emotional ties to the child’s natural parents and siblings; (iii) the child’s emotional attachment to the child’s current caregiver and the caregiver’s family; (iv) the length of time the child has resided with the current caregiver; (v) the potential emotional, developmental, and educational harm to the child if moved from the child’s current placement; and (vi) the potential harm to the child by remaining in State custody for an excessive period of time.”

Maryland law also gives a hierarchy of permanency plans.

Reunification is first in this hierarchy, followed by adoption by a relative, custody and guardianship to a relative, then adoption by a non-relative, followed by custody and guardianship to a non-relative.

However, this hierarchy of permanency plans is limited “to the extent consistent with the best interest of the child” and to the child-centered factors that the court must consider.

As stated by the Maryland Court of Special Appeals: “As reflected in the statutory factors that the court must consider, permanency planning requires examination of the child’s actual lived experience in the world by considering the child’s point of view, valuing the child’s current emotional attachments, recognizing that time has an effect on the child, and recognizing that removing a child from a placement where the child has formed emotional attachments can cause potential emotional, developmental, and educational harm to the child.”

The experiences and the attachments of the child must take center stage in the court’s consideration of the permanency plan.

This child-centered focus is instructive in the following example, where a substance-exposed child had been placed with foster parents since infancy, and after 18 months, the plan was to grant custody and guardianship to those foster parents.

At that time, the child’s mother, who was not able to reunify, sought to have the child placed with an uncle, who was unknown to the child.

The court correctly emphasized the child’s emotional attachment to the foster parents, and the potential harm of removing the child from the only home the child had known and effectuated the permanency plan of custody and guardianship to a non-relative.

Some substance-exposed newborns are placed with relatives, who have been trained to meet the needs of the newborn, after they are released from the hospital.

In those situations, where more than 15 months have passed, the child is emotionally attached to that relative.

In that case, just as in a non-relative placement, if a parent were to suggest a different relative for a new placement of the child after 15 months, the court should consider the child’s bonds and attachments to the relative with whom the child was originally placed, in determining the child’s best interests.

Under Maryland law, the court’s determination of a child’s permanency must be exercised with heavy consideration for the child’s attachments and lived experience of the world.

Richard Perry is a Supervising Attorney at Maryland Legal Aid.