Home > Research Legal Advice > Child Custody > How does DHS work when it comes to visitation after kids are taken away?...
Asked 3 months ago - Rochester, MI
FlagSo my ex had her children taken away by CPS, because she is tribal it got moved to Tribal Court, we have 1 child together which I have custody of and had custody at the time that her other 2 children got removed. In a few weeks is a Permanancy Planning Hearing, she has only seen our daughter once in the last year and she has moved in with several different men in several different cities. She still only gets 2 hours of supervised visits a week with her other two and the tribe has not really tried to set up visits for my daughter. Can they move from 2 hour supervised visits to returning her children to her after one hearing? Or are there certain steps of visitation that she has to take.... like 2 hr supervised to a day a week unsupervised to a weekend unsupervised to fulltime?
DHS must follow the order of the court concerning the frequency of parenting time and whether or not it is supervised. Often the court will grant DHS the discretion to choose who may serve as the supervisor of parenting time. The laws governing child protective proceedings do not outline or dictate a particular parenting time schedule (other than a parent must generally be allowed at least weekly parenting time). Instead, the court decides parenting time based on what is best for the children considering the progress that the parent has made in complying with the parent agency agreement. Generally, it is always best for the children if parenting time is gradually increased so that they can adjust. The fact that your ex still only has supervised parenting time and the case is at the permanency planning stage means that she has not corrected many of the problems that brought the children into the jurisdiction of the court. If it is unlikely, considering the ages of the children, that she will be unable to remove the barriers to safe parenting, the goal of the case could be changed from reunification to termination and the permanency planning hearing. However, because the children are considered Indian children DHS must demonstrate that it made "active efforts" to help your ex reunify with the children (ordinarily only "reasonable efforts" are required). In my experience, a parent that has not substantially complied with the parent-agency agreement by the time of the permanency planing hearing is very unlikely to ever get his or her children back.
Don't speak legalese? We define thousands of terms in plain English.
Browse our legal dictionary