In re Welfare of B.P.

H.O. appealed the termination of her parental rights to her child, B.P. H.O., suffered from drug addiction, depression and other mental health issues, and the effects of long term childhood trauma. B.P., suffered too: she was born addicted to methamphetamine, endured withdrawal, was abandoned by H.O. during infancy, and experienced multiple disruptions when forming attachments with H.O. and various foster parents. On the other hand, after several tries, H.O. achieved sobriety; benefited from treatment in a structured environment; and became an attentive and caring mother to another child, A., in that structured environment. She also engaged in partially supervised, therapeutic visitation with B.P., and the two began to form what witnesses at the termination hearing called a social relationship with an emerging emotional attachment. Despite all that, the Department of Social and Health Services recommended termination of H.O.'s parental rights. The Supreme Court reversed, finding that where a child has special needs (here, special attachment needs); and where, as here, those special needs were exacerbated by the State's failure to timely provide necessary services to the biological parent; then the State has failed to prove this legislatively mandated prerequisite to termination (absent futility, which was not shown here). View "In re Welfare of B.P." on Justia Law