Termination under §§ 19b(3)(c)(i) & (g); Children’s best interests

Holding that clear and convincing evidence supported termination under §§ (c)(i) and (g), and that it was in the children’s best interests, the court affirmed the order terminating respondents’ parental rights. They both argued “that clear and convincing evidence did not support the trial court’s finding of statutory grounds for termination.” The court disagreed. As to § (c)(i), it noted that at the start of the case, “respondent-father and respondent-mother lacked suitable housing, and the same remained true at the time of the termination hearing.” Further, the father agreed during the proceedings “to obtain some form of long-term employment because a lack of food led to the children’s malnourishment as well as their food-binging and hoarding behaviors. [He] claimed to have applied for numerous jobs through an employment agency, but when the foster-care worker checked, she found that he applied for” four jobs over a two-month period and he lacked “the qualifications for any of them. [He] worked at four different jobs” while the case was pending but the longest he held one was three weeks. The mother “claimed that she worked in the past but that she needed to receive disability income because she had low iron and mental-health problems.” However, she “testified at the termination hearing that she did not remember ever receiving a doctor’s diagnosis of a physical problem that prevented her from working. Possibly for that reason, [she] was denied disability income several times in the past, and she received another denial on the first day of the termination hearing. Therefore, by the termination hearing, neither respondent had a source of income or other resources to support themselves, much less a family of six people.” As to the continued existence of the conditions leading to the adjudication, “respondents continued to neglect or ignore the children’s emotional, physical and educational needs.” In addition, the court found “there was no reasonable likelihood, given that this was [the] mother’s second time being involved with services and facing the termination of parental rights, that they would be rectified within a reasonable time given” the children’s young ages. The court also held that the DHHS showed by a preponderance of evidence that terminating respondents’ rights was in the children’s best interests.