Fear Not Law Articles: In re K.C.

In re K

In re K.C.

Filed 12/15/11 In re K.C. CA2/8

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for purposes of rule 8.1115.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

SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION EIGHT

In re K.C. et al., Persons Coming Under the Juvenile Court Law.	B234402
LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN AND FAMILY SERVICES, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. FRANCISCO C., Defendant and Appellant.	(Los Angeles County Super. Ct. No. CK 87553)

Appeal from an order of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County. Marguerite D. Downing, Judge. Affirmed.
Daniel G. Rooney, under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Andrea Sheridan Ordin, County Counsel, James M. Owens, Assistant County Counsel, and Navid Nakhjavani, Deputy County Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.

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Father, Francisco C., appeals only one order of the trial court in these dependency proceedings, the dispositional order that his visits with his two young children, K.C. and A.C., be monitored. Father does not appeal from the assertion of dependency jurisdiction over the children or from the order removing the children from their mother’s custody, to be suitably placed under the supervision of the Department of Children and Family Services (Department). We affirm the order, finding the court did not abuse its discretion in ordering that father’s visits were to be monitored, with discretion placed in the Department to liberalize visitation.
Father was incarcerated in federal prison serving a 21-month sentence for drug trafficking when the children came to the attention of the Department for neglect while in the care of their mother. When he began to serve his sentence, K.C. was less than two years old, and A.C. was eight months old. Mother told a Department social worker that before his incarceration, father had little contact with the children, did not provide for them emotionally or financially, and the children regarded mother’s live-in boyfriend as their father. Mother did not even know father was in prison because his contact with the family had been so minimal.
Upon his release from prison, father was sent to a halfway house in San Diego while serving 18 months on federal parole. He told the Department he was unable to provide care for the children but agreed to receive services. Upon his release from the halfway house, about three months after the children had come to the attention of the Department, father contacted the Department and began to visit the children. Father visited the children every Friday, but he was unable to comply with the Department’s safety plan because he had to focus on compliance with his terms of parole. Since mother also was not compliant, the Department filed a petition pursuant to Welfare and Institutions Code section 300, about seven months after the initial referral of the children to the Department.
In an interview with a Department social worker, father acknowledged he had committed domestic violence upon mother in 2007. Father’s criminal history revealed that before his federal incarceration for drug trafficking, he had been arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, and he was an active member of a criminal street gang.
The court sustained the allegations of the petition regarding mother’s substance abuse and both parents’ failure to seek dental care for A.C. who, at age two and a half, while placed by the Department with a caregiver, finally visited a dentist and was found to have 16 cavities. Father blamed mother for giving the children soda and candy and neglecting to care for A.C., and he did not accept responsibility for his own neglect of the children while he engaged in gangbanging and illegal drug trafficking, with the predictable consequences of incarceration and parole that severely limited his ability to care for the children himself.
Father acknowledges that the standard of review on this appeal is whether the trial court abused its discretion in ordering at disposition that his visits be monitored, granting the Department discretion to liberalize the visits. Thus, we may reverse only if we conclude the order for monitored visits exceeded the bounds of reason and was “arbitrary, capricious or patently absurd.” (In re Geoffrey G. (1979) 98 Cal.App.3d 412, 421.) Father argues the sustained allegations concerning his failure to provide dental care do not support the dispositional order for monitored visits. But in making dispositional orders, including visitation orders, the court is not limited to the content of the sustained petition and may consider the social study reports of the Department. (In re Rodger H. (1991) 228 Cal.App.3d 1174, 1183.) The detention, jurisdiction and disposition reports provided relevant and material evidence described above that justified the court’s order for monitored visits.
The court acted well within its discretion in finding that father’s visits should be monitored while he began to build a relationship with his young children, to whom he was a virtual stranger until the Department began providing reunification services, at least until the Department could determine the visits could be liberalized without any risk of harm to the children. Father has never undertaken responsibility for the care of his children. Rather, after he had two children, he failed to provide emotional or financial support for them and engaged in illegal activities that landed him in prison. After his release from prison, compliance with criminal parole was more important to him than the rather minimal compliance required by the Department’s safety plan so as to avoid dependency jurisdiction over the children. Father’s successful monitored visits with the children give reason to hope that, in time, he will demonstrate it is in the children’s best interests to have unmonitored visits with him. But the court acted reasonably in concluding, based on the information available at the time of the jurisdiction and disposition hearing, that father’s visits should be monitored.
DISPOSITION
The order is affirmed.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

GRIMES, J.

We concur:

BIGELOW, P. J.

RUBIN, J.

Description	Father, Francisco C., appeals only one order of the trial court in these dependency proceedings, the dispositional order that his visits with his two young children, K.C. and A.C., be monitored. Father does not appeal from the assertion of dependency jurisdiction over the children or from the order removing the children from their mother's custody, to be suitably placed under the supervision of the Department of Children and Family Services (Department). We affirm the order, finding the court did not abuse its discretion in ordering that father's visits were to be monitored, with discretion placed in the Department to liberalize visitation. Father was incarcerated in federal prison serving a 21-month sentence for drug trafficking when the children came to the attention of the Department for neglect while in the care of their mother. When he began to serve his sentence, K.C. was less than two years old, and A.C. was eight months old. Mother told a Department social worker that before his incarceration, father had little contact with the children, did not provide for them emotionally or financially, and the children regarded mother's live-in boyfriend as their father. Mother did not even know father was in prison because his contact with the family had been so minimal.
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