Permanency Planning Trial

Court for permanency planning for Elmer's case was scheduled for August 22.  It was "Standby Case B", meaning it would get heard if there was still time after the main case and Standby Case A. 


For "hearings," each case is on the docket for 15 minutes only, so any contested matters - i.e. if DSS and the family cannot agree - are "continued" for trial. For trials, they will take as much time as needed to present the evidence and for the judge to make a decision.  Hence, sometimes the standby cases get heard on trial day, and sometimes they don't.


Court was planned for a workday for me (the hearings are usually on Fridays, a day that I don't typically work). I had just been out of work sick for ten days a couple of weeks before, so I decided not to take more time off of work for a case that might or might not get heard. 


In the end, the case WAS heard and the caseworker texted me that they got the agreement that the plan would be TPR concurrent with reunification so that the parents would agree.  She said that DSS was still planning on going through with the TPR. 


I wish that I had been there so that I could have seen how things progressed to end up at that point.  I thought that because this was a TRIAL, that it was up to the judge to make a decision and that they didn't need to have the parents agree.  So I don't know if the judge just felt sorry for the parents and so said reunification would be a concurrent goal; or if it was just easier to proceed if the parents agreed; or if this is TRULY a concurrent goal. 


I have had a couple of people ask how those two things could be concurrent goals since they are polar opposites.  It actually is common to have those two goals together.  Meaning, the goal is reunification (as it almost always is in foster care), but knowing that there are often times when the parents can't get it together and so there is a backup goal of TPR/adoption - and all the preparation for the adoption side of things is done if the reunification does not work out.  I understand the concurrent goal as a general concept.  However, in this particular case, I have a hard time wrapping my head around reunification still being any sort of goal, since the parents don't have a treatment plan and agreed to "forego all reasonable efforts to reunite."  So then why is reunification still written down on paper?