Filed 5/29/18 Michael Z. v. Superior Court CA4/3

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN OFFICIAL REPORTS

California Rules of Court, rule 8.1115(a), prohibits courts and parties from citing or relying on opinions not certified for publication or ordered published, except as specified by rule 8.1115(b). This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION THREE


MICHAEL Z.,

Petitioner,

v.

THE SUPERIOR COURT OF ORANGE COUNTY,

Respondent;

ORANGE COUNTY SOCIAL SERVICES AGENCY et al.,

Real Parties in Interest.






G056089

(Super. Ct. No. DP022387-002)

O P I N I O N

Original proceedings; petition for extraordinary writ to challenge an order of the Superior Court of Orange County, Katherine Lewis, Judge. Petition denied.
Sharon Petrosino, Public Defender, Kenneth Norelli, Assistant Public Defender and Brian Okamoto, Deputy Public Defender for Petitioner.
Leon J. Page, County Counsel, Karen L. Christensen and Aurelio Torre, Deputies County Counsel for Real Party in Interest Orange County Social Services Agency.
Law Office of Harold LaFlamme and Camden Polischuk for Real Party in Interest the Minor.
* * *
INTRODUCTION
We first encountered minor Alice Z. in 2014, when she was about five years old. Anaheim police officers had picked her up two years earlier after discovering her living with her parents, Michael and Tara Z., in almost unimaginable filth and squalor. Alice was returned to her parents with family maintenance services under the supervision of Orange County Social Services Agency (SSA), services mainly focused on seeing that Alice’s home met minimum health and safety requirements and that she obtained necessary medical and dental care. The case was closed in 2015.
Sadly, Alice is back. An Orange County deputy sheriff picked her up after Michael drank himself into insensibility in the motel room where the family was living. Alice had not been getting enough to eat, and her father took her panhandling with him, after his drinking cost him his job. Her mother, Tara, seems to have disappeared into drug use. Alice has been placed in foster care.
The juvenile court terminated Michael’s and Tara’s reunification services, and Michael alone has petitioned to overturn the order. We deny the petition. Substantial evidence supported the juvenile court’s conclusions that there was no substantial probability of Alice’s being returned to Michael’s custody within the next six months – a criterion for extending reunification services beyond the 12-month mark – and that he had been offered reasonable reunification services. The only complaint regarding services Michael has made here deals with the ambiance at the Eckhart building, where he did most of his visitation, which he argues was so uncongenial as to constitute a failure to provide reasonable services. We conclude the ambiance was not at fault.
FACTS
In early January 2017, Orange County deputies found Michael passed out in a motel room littered with empty liquor bottles and broken glass. The toilet contained old feces, and the refrigerator contained only expired milk, no food. The deputies could not find Tara. Alice was taken to Orangewood, where she described domestic violence between her parents, alcohol abuse by Michael, and drug use by Tara. Alice also stated the family was homeless and Michael took her panhandling with him. Alice was about two weeks short of her eighth birthday.
When the social worker finally caught up with her, Tara explained that Michael had lost his job in March 2016 because of his drinking, and the family had since been homeless. Tara also reported domestic violence, increasing after Michael lost his job, and that Michael drank two to three bottles of wine per day. Tara claimed to have enrolled Alice in an online school, but could not remember the school’s name.
When interviewed in jail, Michael had only negative things to say about Tara. She used methadone and heroin, she kept him awake at night, she stole money from him for drugs, she left him alone to “babysit” Alice for days, and she was extremely lazy. He himself had no problem with alcohol, drinking only a bottle of wine a day and some vodka, and he was not drunk when the deputies came to the motel room in response to the child abuse referral. Michael could not understand why Alice and Tara were closely bonded, given Tara’s numerous failings, and he represented himself as “not that good with kids.”
Alice was detained on January 11, 2017. Tara did not attend the hearing. Michael attended in custody. Alice was placed in Orangewood, and the court ordered SSA to provide reunification services for Michael and Tara. No visitation was permitted at that point.
Alice went to foster care on February 1, 2017. As of the jurisdiction hearing date, February 8, Tara had not been located. When interviewed in jail by the social worker just before the jurisdiction hearing, Michael stated that the counseling he had received through his earlier encounter with SSA was not useful. He agreed to participate in drug testing, but refused to agree to counseling or parenting classes. He did not inquire about Alice.
Michael pleaded no contest to the petition at the February 8 jurisdiction hearing. Under the terms of the resultant order, he did not have to take a separate parenting class as long as his child abuse program through the criminal court addressed parenting. He was allowed monitored visits with Alice twice a week for two hours. The court set the six-month hearing for August 8.
Tara finally surfaced in July 2017. She claimed to be living in Anaheim, sharing a room with a friend, and doing makeup as her employment. After being released from jail, Michael was once again living in motel rooms and drinking heavily. He again accused Tara of stealing from him. For her part, Tara claimed Michael would give her money, then get drunk and forget he had done so.
Alice was diagnosed with morbid obesity and autism spectrum disorder. She was reported to be adjusting well to her foster placement and to finally being in school.
Tara was not allowed visitation until she had presented herself to the court. She arranged a meeting with a social worker in July, asking to visit Alice, but disappeared again. Michael, who was allowed two-hour visits twice a week, skipped 30 of them between February and August 2017. The visits he did attend went poorly, as he did not engage with Alice, and she wound up playing with other children.
At the six-month review hearing on August 8, Tara showed up in court for the first time. The court set visitation for Tara, and the hearing was continued to August 23. The court warned both parents that time was running short. On August 23, at a hearing attended by Michael but not Tara, the court found that continued supervision was necessary, and the matter was continued to February 5, 2018, for the 12-month review. Finding both parents had made minimal progress on their case plans, the court once again warned about the possible consequences of failing to work the case plan.
Between the six-month hearing and the 12-month hearing, some things changed and some did not. Alice began to confide in her therapist about her life with her parents and to express her desire to remain with her foster mother. She regarded her detention by the deputies in January 2017 as a rescue. She also revealed that, while living with her parents, she ate only one meal a day. She wanted to be adopted by her foster mother and began calling her “mommy.” The therapist opined that Alice would be at high risk of further abuse and neglect were she to be returned to her parents. The therapist also noted the improvement in Alice’s general well-being now that she was “surrounded by normally functioning people.”
Tara did not participate in her case plan reunification services. She did, however, begin visiting, in early November. She asked to visit Alice along with Michael and agreed to monitored visitation to coincide with his. Tara’s visits with Alice went well; Michael’s – when he showed up and stayed awake – did not. As had been observed before, his interaction with Alice was hit-or-miss. SSA offered to provide a coach to help him during the visits, but Michael refused. He took so many breaks during his two-hour visits – usually to smoke outside the building – that the social worker finally had to restrict him to one 10-minute break per visit.
SSA’s recommendation for the 12-month review hearing was to terminate services and to schedule a selection and implementation hearing. The hearing was continued from February 5 to March 7, 2018. After hearing testimony over several days, the juvenile court ruled that SSA had met its burden to show that returning Alice to Michael’s custody would create a substantial risk of detriment to her safety and well-being. The court principally relied on the evidence of Michael’s inability to engage with Alice during the two hours of his visits and his neglect of her needs during those visits. While acknowledging that Michael had engaged in certain services – such as his batterers’ treatment program and child abuse prevention – the court found he had not sufficiently engaged in the most important program at all: substance abuse treatment. In fact, Michael did not even recognize that drunkenness was a form of substance abuse; he had balked at participating because he was not using “drugs.” The court found that Michael’s last-minute efforts to enroll in a substance abuse treatment program and his acceptance during the week before the hearing of a coach for the visits were too little too late. The court concluded that, although it was technically possible for Michael to sit through all his programs during the next six months, “the receptiveness to learning and then implementing what he’s learned is not present.” “[T]he problem that we have here is something deeper than six months can heal. It has a lot to do with [Michael’s] receptiveness.”
The juvenile court terminated Michael’s and Tara’s reunification services and set a selection and implementation hearing for July 9, 2018. Only Michael filed a notice of intent to file a writ petition. SSA and Alice’s counsel have both opposed the petition.
 
DISCUSSION
We review the trial court’s decision to terminate reunification services for substantial evidence. (James B. v. Superior Court (1995) 35 Cal.App.4th 1014, 1020.) We resolve all conflicts in favor of the court’s determinations. (In re Kristin H. (1996) 46 Cal.App.4th 1635, 1649.)
Under Welfare and Institutions Code section 361.5, subdivision (a)(3)(A), at the 12-month mark a court may extend services for another six months, “if it can be shown . . . that the permanent plan for the child is that he or she will be returned and safely maintained in the home within the extended time period. The court shall extend the time period only if it finds that there is a substantial probability that the child will be returned to the physical custody of his or her parent or guardian within the extended time period or that reasonable services have not been provided to the parent or guardian.” At the 12-month hearing, the court must return the child to the parent’s custody “unless the court finds, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the return of the child to his or her parent . . . would create a substantial risk of detriment to the safety, protection, or physical or emotional well-being of the child.” (Welf. & Inst. Code, § 366.21, subd. (f)(1).)
Michael does not dispute the juvenile court’s findings of substantial detriment and the need for continued supervision of Alice. Substantial evidence supported the court’s findings. His behavior at visits alone strongly confirmed his own self-assessment that he was “not that good with kids.” At the 12-month hearing on March 8, 2017, after months of services, Michael testified that his idea of showing he could act as Alice’s parent was “to let her do what she wants most of the time.” He interacted only fitfully with Alice during visits, routinely arrived late and left early (when he did not cancel), frequently left to smoke, and did not seem to know how to engage with her. And he refused SSA’s offer of a coach to help him overcome this deficiency.
Michael argues instead that the juvenile court erred when if found by clear and convincing evidence that SSA provided reasonable reunification services. He has no quarrel with most of the services offered. Instead, he focuses solely on inadequate visitation. Actually, he is more specific than that. Michael argues that making him visit in the Eckhoff building amounted to a failure to provide reasonable services. (See Tracy J. v. Superior Court (2012) 202 Cal.App.4th 1415, 1427 [unfounded limitation of visitation does not constitute reasonable services].) According to Michael, the visits took place in an artificial setting that distorted his true parenting abilities.
When we review the reasonableness of the reunification services provided by SSA, we must recognize that in many cases more services could have been provided, and the services provided are often imperfect. “The standard is not whether the services provided were the best that might have been provided, but whether they were reasonable under the circumstances.” (Elijah R. v. Superior Court (1998) 66 Cal.App.4th 965, 969.)
Michael’s visits had to be monitored. He had a history of severe alcohol abuse and of physical abuse of his wife and daughter. His daughter was afraid of him. His early visits with Alice – when he turned up – showed him to be largely detached and uninvolved with her. Some adult had to keep close tabs on him.
Even so, Michael’s visits were not restricted to Eckhoff. After he complained about visiting there, the visits were scheduled in different places: the public library and the offices of the Foster Family Agency (FFA) building. The visits in these places were no more successful than the visits at Eckhoff. During a visit at the FFA office in October 2017, Michael fell asleep on the couch. Alice did not want to wake him because she was afraid of his reaction. When the monitor woke him, he was no more attentive to Alice than he was on other visits. A second visit at the FFA office featured Michael falling asleep on the floor. Finally the monitor told the social worker that she felt safe during Michael’s visits only at Eckhoff.
Michael’s true parenting abilities were on display in all of the visits he managed to attend. With all her faults, Tara showed what visits could accomplish. Although she was allowed visits with Alice that were merely supervised, Tara agreed to the more intrusive monitored visits so that she, Alice, and Michael could visit together. Tara was always engaged with Alice. She talked to Alice throughout the visits, paid her full attention, and asked about her school and her foster home. The contrast with Michael, who spoke only when spoken to, paid little attention to Alice, and never asked about her life, was stark.
The reason Michael’s reunification services were terminated had little to do with the location of his visits with Alice. The services were terminated because he did not know how to be Alice’s parent and did not work to acquire this skill. The juvenile court had ample evidence upon which to base the termination of reunification services.
DISPOSITION
The petition is denied.


BEDSWORTH, ACTING P. J.
WE CONCUR:



MOORE, J.



ARONSON, J.