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

Finding no clear error under §§ (c)(i) and (j), or in the trial court’s finding that termination of respondent-mother’s parental rights was in the child’s (RB) best interests, the court affirmed. As to § (c)(i), “(1) 182 or more days must have elapsed since the initial dispositional order, (2) the conditions leading to adjudication must continue to exist, and (3) there must be ‘no reasonable likelihood that the conditions will be rectified within a reasonable time considering the child’s age.’ All three requirements are present here.” First, the initial disposition order was filed on 4/1/24, and the termination trial began 221 days later. Second, the court found that “the trial court did not clearly err by finding that the conditions leading to adjudication—identified as parenting skills, mental health, unemployment, housing insecurity, and substance abuse—continued to exist.” As to the third requirement, “there simply were no signs of improvement in the reasonably foreseeable future.” Thus, the court held that “the trial court did not clearly err by finding that respondent would be unable to rectify the conditions that led to adjudication within a reasonable time considering RB’s age.” As to § (j), the court found that given that respondent did not “follow the conditions of her case service plan to rectify her mental health and substance abuse barriers and that her behavior contributed to placing RB at risk of harm, the trial court did not clearly err in finding that it was reasonably likely that RB would experience emotional or physical harm if returned to” her care. The trial court did not clearly err in finding that her “continuing substance abuse presented a reasonable likelihood of harm to RB.” Respondent also highlighted “that, despite the caseworker’s testimony that allegations of physical abuse contributed to RB’s emergency removal, the record is absent of testimony of specific instances of alleged physical abuse of RB by respondent. However, this statutory ground encompasses more than actual physical harm.” The record amply supported “that respondent placed RB at the risk of both physical and emotional harm.”