In re R.C. CA2/5

Filed 10/30/26 In re R.C. CA2/5
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS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 This opinion has not been certified for publication or ordered published for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 FIVE

In re R.C. et al., Persons Coming B348186
Under the Juvenile Court Law.
___________________________________ (Los Angeles County
LOS ANGELES COUNTY Super. Ct. No.
DEPARTMENT OF CHILDREN 25LJJP00101)
AND FAMILY SERVICES,

Plaintiff and Respondent,

v.

S.E.

Defendant and Appellant.

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of Los
Angeles County, Jennifer W. Baronoff, Judge Pro Tempore.
Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.
Janelle B. Price, under appointment by the Court of
Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Dawyn R. Harrison, County Counsel, Jacklyn K. Louie,
Assistant County Counsel, and Tracey Dodds, Principal Deputy
County Counsel, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
S.E. (Mother) is the mother of a four-year-old daughter R.C.
and a two-year-old son K.C. (collectively, Minors).1 The juvenile
court took dependency jurisdiction over Minors for three reasons
that it found presented a substantial risk of serious physical
harm: Mother’s failure to adequately supervise them, her medical
neglect of them, and her marijuana abuse. The court also
ordered Minors removed from Mother’s custody. We principally
consider whether substantial evidence supports the juvenile
court’s jurisdiction findings and the associated removal order.
We additionally address Mother’s contention that the Los
Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services
(the Department) did not comply with its inquiry and notice
obligations under California law related to the Indian Child
Welfare Act (Welf. & Inst. Code,2 § 224 et seq. (Cal-ICWA)).

I. BACKGROUND
On January 31, 2025, a downstairs neighbor in Mother’s
Palmdale apartment complex spotted R.C. outside of Mother’s
apartment. The complex is a two-story structure with all of the
apartments located around an interior courtyard with two
entrance gates, one providing access to the street, the other
leading to the complex’s parking lot. Mother and Minors had
lived at the complex since March 2024.

1
These were Minors’ ages at the initiation of dependency
proceedings.
2
Undesignated statutory references that follow are to the
Welfare and Institutions Code.

2
The neighbor subsequently told Los Angeles County
Sheriff’s Department deputies that R.C. “frequently (1-2 times
per week)” leaves Mother’s apartment unattended and the
neighbor would let R.C. play near her apartment until Mother or
her romantic partner D.O. would retrieve the child. On this
instance in January, when neither Mother nor D.O. came after
R.C., the neighbor went upstairs to Mother’s apartment and
knocked “numerous times” on the front door. K.C. opened the
door crying, and the neighbor contacted local law enforcement to
report possible child neglect.
When the deputies arrived at Mother’s apartment at
approximately one in the afternoon, they noticed that the glass of
the front window had a large opening that was covered by a piece
of cardboard. As they were about to enter the apartment to check
the premises, the deputies saw D.O. in the unit’s kitchen and he
appeared to have just woken up. He opened the door for the
deputies and acknowledged Minors were “continuously” exiting
the apartment through the window and going downstairs to play.
D.O. explained the window broke months ago and had not yet
been repaired despite repeated requests to the complex’s
manager.
Upon entry into the apartment, the deputies observed that
the floor was “filthy” and they detected a faint odor of gas coming
from an unknown source near the unit’s heater. D.O. went into
the bedroom and returned with Mother, who explained she and
D.O. were asleep when R.C. left the apartment unaccompanied.
The deputies interviewed the apartment complex’s
manager, who advised that the window in Mother’s apartment
broke about a month earlier because Mother and D.O. were using
it, not the door, to enter and exit the apartment; Mother and

3
D.O., the manager explained, had barricaded the door to prevent
R.C. from exiting the apartment unsupervised.
The Department received a family welfare referral and
began investigating. A social worker left business cards at
neighboring apartments and received a telephone call from an
apartment complex tenant who advised that Minors frequently
wandered around the complex unaccompanied by an adult. The
same tenant related that K.C. would often go downstairs to
neighbors’ apartments and knock on their doors while hungry.
A few days after receiving the call from the neighboring
tenant, the social worker met with Mother and D.O. After being
advised that neighbors had reported seeing R.C. in the complex
unaccompanied on multiple occasions, Mother insisted her
daughter had left the apartment unsupervised only once. When
the social worker expressed concern that Mother was not being
honest, D.O contradicted Mother and stated R.C. had been
outside the apartment unsupervised on five or six occasions.
Mother, however, still maintained R.C. had “escaped” from the
family’s home only one time, the day the deputies were
dispatched to the complex. Mother reported she had a job as an
overnight caregiver for her father, but she claimed Minors were
never left unsupervised while she was working because D.O. was
present.3 Mother and D.O. both admitted to using marijuana and
Mother also admitted she drinks alcohol socially.
When asked about the smell of gas in the apartment,
Mother advised she was aware of it and had complained to the

3
In January 2025, Mother’s caregiver hours were from six
o’clock in the evening to six o’clock in the morning, Monday
through Thursday.

4
apartment’s manager about it. The social worker had concerns
about the cleanliness of the home, but she ultimately concluded
there were no safety concerns.
Mother admitted Minors had not received a medical or
dental check-up during the past year. A review of Minors’
immunization records by a public health nurse revealed R.C. was
not up-to-date on one required vaccination and that K.C. was
missing six vaccinations, five of which were required. The social
worker observed R.C. appeared to be suffering from a speech
delay as she did not talk or make any eye contact, and Mother
acknowledged R.C. had tantrums that were likely related to an
inability to communicate with others.
Later that same day, the social worker spoke with the
manager of the apartment complex, who advised that R.C. would
regularly “escape” from the family’s apartment (by either
crawling through the broken window or opening the unit’s front
door) and walk downstairs to a neighboring tenant’s apartment.
The manager said that after the deputies left the complex on
January 31, R.C. “escaped” the apartment once more
unsupervised.
The social worker also spoke with Minors’ father T.C., Jr.
(Father), who lived in Northern California, and a paternal aunt;
they both expressed concerns that Mother is a sex worker.
Father, who admitted he was on probation, stated he would be
willing to take custody of Minors. A “CLETS” criminal history
report revealed Father had an “extensive” criminal history but
Mother had “no concerning” history as an adult.
In addition to interviews concerning Minors’ welfare, the
social worker reviewed a police services dispatch log for Mother’s
apartment. The log documented the aforementioned incident

5
prompting the Department’s investigation and another dispatch
six months earlier on May 6, 2024; that entry related that a
female and a baby were heard screaming. The log also
documented a dispatch on February 2, 2025, just days after the
incident prompting the Department’s investigation; on that day,
the caller stated a child “keeps crawling out broken window.
When parents found child they hit her on the head.”
In April 2025, the Department filed a three-count
dependency petition alleging, pursuant to section 300,
subdivision (b)(1), that Minors were at substantial risk of
suffering serious physical harm as a result of Mother’s failure or
inability to adequately supervise or protect Minors. The first
count alleged Mother “failed to provide the children with
appropriate parental care and supervision,” pointing to the
occasions on which the children had climbed out of the apartment
window and wandered downstairs to a neighbor’s home. The first
count further alleged that “[R.C]. is diagnosed with
Developmental Disorder of speech and language[,] . . . [K.C.] is
diagnosed with Speech Delay with Delayed milestones[,] . . . [and
t]he children are of such a young age which requires appropriate
adult supervision at all times.” The second petition count alleged
the children were similarly at risk because Mother “has a history
of substance abuse and is a current abuser of alcohol and
marijuana.” The third and final count of the petition alleged
Minors were at risk because Mother medically neglected the
children, as evidenced by missed immunizations and the failure
to pursue behavioral therapy to address their speech delay-
related issues.
At the initial detention hearing, the juvenile court detained
Minors from Mother, released them into Father’s care under the

6
Department’s supervision, and ordered unmonitored visitation
for Mother. Although Mother represented that the issues with
her apartment (the broken window and smell of gas) had been
addressed, the court ordered the Department to reassess the
safety of Mother’s home to determine whether Minors could be
released into her care.
In early May 2025, a Department investigator conducted an
in-person assessment of Mother’s apartment. The investigator
found that the front window had been covered by a wood board
installed by the apartment complex. Mother now slept in the
living room while Minors occupied the bedroom. The investigator
found that the apartment was “tidy” with “minimal” cleaning
required and that the utilities were all in operating order with no
odor of gas.
When the Department’s investigator asked Mother about
the smell of marijuana in her apartment, Mother admitted she
still smoked marijuana daily but had reduced her consumption
from seven to eight “blunts” per day to three.4 Mother conceded
there had been a year-long lapse in Minors’ medical care, which
she attributed to her post-partum depression following K.C.’s
birth—a condition which left her with only “enough energy to
take care of their basic needs.” As for R.C.’s unsupervised exit
from the apartment that prompted the call to the police and
triggered dependency proceedings, Mother explained she was
asleep at the time because she had worked the night before as the
maternal grandfather’s in-home support caregiver and D.O. was

4
The Department reported that between February 11, 2025
and May 6, 2025, Mother had one negative drug test, two positive
tests for marijuana, and three “no shows.”

7
supposed to be watching Minors but he too fell asleep. As of this
early May timeframe, D.O. told the investigator that he and
Mother were no longer in a relationship (he had moved out of the
home) but he was still willing to be “a support to [Mother] and
help her with the kids.”
On May 15, 2025, the juvenile court held a hearing to take
testimony on the condition of Mother’s home. Mother and her
“cultural broker” testified; they each affirmed that the apartment
safety issues had been addressed. The court acknowledged
Mother had made some positive changes but declined to release
Minors into her care before holding the jurisdiction hearing. The
court explained it was especially interested in seeing better drug
testing results from Mother and learning about Minors’ safety
while in Father’s care.
In preparation for the jurisdiction hearing on the
dependency petition, a Department investigator re-interviewed
Mother and D.O. Mother continued to maintain R.C. left her
apartment only once unsupervised, namely, the day that deputies
came to her apartment. She said that on other occasions when
neighbors saw her children outside the apartment, they were
under her supervision and she had merely let them run around
and play outside. D.O. related that on the day deputies returned
Minors to the apartment, Mother was asleep because she had just
returned from working all night and he fell asleep due to his
lupus medication; while he admitted to being at fault, he
emphasized that R.C. would not have been able to crawl out the
broken window if management had responded in a timely
manner to their repair requests. Mother acknowledged both
Minors suffered from speech delays but denied either child had

8
been diagnosed with delays prior to the initiation of dependency
proceedings.
Before the scheduled jurisdiction hearing, the Department
asked the juvenile court to remove Minors from Father’s custody
in July 2025. The Department reported, among other things,
that Father repeatedly violated the juvenile court’s orders
regarding Mother’s visits, failed to pick up Minors after a visit
with Mother, dropped out of communication with the
Department, failed to pick up medicine for K.C., and failed to
provide documentation that he took Minors to medical
appointments. The court granted the Department’s request to
remove the children and later filed an amended dependency
petition adding allegations against Father for neglect and
abandonment.5
In last-minute information reports filed just prior to the
jurisdiction hearing, the Department reported Mother’s home
was “clean and well organized with no safety hazards.” Mother
reported that “since the children have been gone[ ] she has
flexibility” in her work schedule and had changed to working
from noon to six o’clock in the evening, Monday through
Thursday. She was seeking employment at a daycare facility and
hoped to have that facility provide care for the children, but that
was only “in process” and there was no anticipated start date.
In addition, the Department advised that from mid-May
through the end of July, Mother had seven drug tests, three of
which were negative and the remainder of which showed varying
levels of marijuana metabolites. The testing also showed that

5
Father is not a party to this appeal.

9
when Mother tested positive for marijuana on July 30, 2025, she
also tested positive for ethanol (alcohol). Additionally, the
Department reported Mother had completed a 12-week parenting
course and participated in a “highly engaged” manner in
individual counseling.
At the combined jurisdiction and disposition hearing held
on August 7, 2025, the juvenile court admitted the Department’s
reports into evidence and sustained the amended dependency
petition as pled. The court found that there were “a lot of child
safety issues” and evidence showing that Minors were
unsupervised on more than one occasion while in Mother’s care.6
The court additionally observed that it believed Mother’s
substance abuse was linked to her failure to supervise Minors:
“[R]egardless of how marijuana affects people, you can’t smoke 7
or 8 blunts a day and be sleeping and be taking care of young
children with special needs.” The court was “even more
concerned” by Mother’s recent positive test for alcohol because
she “either had to drink enough the day before for it still to be in
[her] system or drank on the day of the testing . . . in either
situation that is not good.” As a result, the court found that
while Mother had “significantly decreased” her substance use, the
risk to Minors had not been ameliorated. Finally, while the court

6
The court explained: “I think the problem was that with
very young children, you can’t—you can’t sleep as much. You
can’t be asleep. You can’t—there has to be someone. That’s just
the reality of parenting, especially when you know this has
happened. You’ve got to be awake. You’ve got to be around.
You’ve got to be aware of what the kids are doing and up to.”

10
sympathized with Mother’s postpartum struggles, the fact
remained that there had been a “lapse” in Minors’ medical
checkups.
The juvenile court removed Minors from their parents’ care
and ordered unmonitored visitation for Mother in her home. The
court explained that notwithstanding Mother’s progress, her
continued substance use prevented it from returning Minors to
her care: “[W]hat is stopping me from returning [Minors] to you
today are these positive tests. Because [Minors] are so young,
because they have special needs, because the case came in
because they weren’t being appropriately supervised, I need you
to test clean, period. . . . [¶] . . . [T]hose tests need to be clean,
especially because you are going to be the sole adult supervising
them.”

II. DISCUSSION
Substantial evidence supports the juvenile court’s decision
to sustain the first dependency petition count alleging Mother’s
failure or inability to adequately supervise Minors put them at
substantial risk of suffering serious physical harm. The risk from
lack of supervision existed regardless of whether the root cause of
the failure or inability was attributable to substance abuse, and
we accordingly need not consider whether dependency
jurisdiction was independently warranted based on the substance
abuse and medical neglect counts of the petition. (In re I.J.
(2013) 56 Cal.4th 766, 773.)
The juvenile court’s removal order, however, is another
matter. A removal finding must be made by clear and convincing
evidence, and our Supreme Court has instructed we must apply
an incrementally more stringent form of substantial evidence

11
review where that is the case. (Conservatorship of O.B. (2020) 9
Cal.5th 989, 1011 [“the question before the appellate court is
whether the record as a whole contains substantial evidence from
which a reasonable fact finder could have found it highly
probable that the fact was true”].) Here, the juvenile court
removed the children from Mother’s custody only because her
drug tests were not fully “clean” for marijuana use. Under the
governing standard of review, some demonstrated marijuana use,
without more, is too attenuated from the requisite “substantial
danger” to Minor’s physical or emotional well-being and an
insufficient reason for removal. (§ 361, subd. (c)(1); see also In re
N.R. (2023) 15 Cal.5th 520, 558-559.) Because we shall reverse
the order removing Minors from Mother’s custody (and because
there necessarily will be additional proceedings in the juvenile
court), Mother’s claim of Cal-ICWA error is moot and we decline
to exercise our discretion to resolve it.

A. Substantial Evidence Supports the Jurisdiction
Finding
Section 300, subdivision (b)(1), authorizes a juvenile court
to exercise dependency jurisdiction over a child if the “child has
suffered, or there is a substantial risk that the child will suffer,
serious physical harm or illness, as a result of . . . [¶] (A) The
failure or inability of the child’s parent or guardian to adequately
supervise or protect the child. [¶] . . . [¶] (D) The inability of the
parent or guardian to provide regular care for the child due to the
parent’s or guardian’s . . . substance abuse.” A reviewing court
has affirmed the exercise of dependency jurisdiction for such a
failure or inability to supervise where the eight-year-old child in
question was often found “roaming the apartment complex” after

12
climbing out the window of the family home and the father had
left the child “unsupervised on several occasions for extended
periods of time without arranging adult supervision.” (In re M.D.
(2023) 93 Cal.App.5th 836, 851-852.)
The circumstances here are comparable—and in some
respects present an even stronger case for the exercise of
dependency jurisdiction. Like M.D., Minors repeatedly climbed
out of the window of the family home and wandered around their
apartment complex. Neighbors in some instances found and fed
them, and sometimes the neighbors had difficulty when they
tried tor return the children to Mother or D.O. because they were
not present or asleep. Law enforcement officers were also called
because Minors were unsupervised. And Minors here were more
vulnerable than M.D.; they were just two and four years old at
the start of dependency proceedings (not age 8) and they had
speech delays that made communication with others difficult.
The juvenile court reasonably concluded that the oversight that
comes with dependency jurisdiction was necessary to ensure the
children’s welfare in light of Mother’s inadequate supervision.
Mother, however, argues that dependency jurisdiction was
not warranted because the window of her home was boarded up
in between the April 2025 filing of the dependency petition and
the August 2025 jurisdiction hearing and because she had
changed her caregiving hours from an overnight shift to a
daytime (6 AM to 6 PM) shift. The argument suffers from several
flaws.
First, by the time of the jurisdiction hearing, Mother and
D.O. were no longer living together and there was no definite
plan to ensure that Minors were adequately supervised while
Mother was working—and even, to an extent, when she was not;

13
there was instead a non-final daycare process underway with no
start date and that, in any event, would not cover late evening
hours. Second, Mother insisted all along that Minors had only
left the home unsupervised on one occasion despite other
evidence (including statements from D.O.) of repeated instances
where Minors were left unsupervised. The juvenile court could
reasonably conclude Mother’s persistent denial indicated a
reluctance to fully address the supervision issues without court
and Department involvement. (In re Gabriel K. (2012) 203
Cal.App.4th 188, 197 [“[o]ne cannot correct a problem one fails to
acknowledge”]; see also M.D., supra, 93 Cal.App.5th at 853-854
[“Before the jurisdictional and dispositional hearing, [the father]
reported that certain conditions in the apartment had been
corrected. However, the record supports the view his underlying
parenting issues remained unaddressed. His repeated denials
that he had left [the child] alone without food or electricity, and
his failure to take advantage of services offered to him or even to
understand why he required them, supported the conclusion he
continued to lack insight into the serious concerns that led to
dependency”].) Third, the juvenile court had just a four-month
period (from the filing of the dependency petition to the
jurisdiction hearing) to assess whether the risk from Mother’s
failure or inability to provide adequate supervision had durably
improved, and preventing the young, special needs children from
wandering out of the family home unattended was just one
aspect, though the most pressing, of the supervision concerns.
The court could justifiably conclude dependency jurisdiction
would provide the necessary support and assistance to ensure
Mother was capable of giving the children the full supervision
they required.

14
B. Substantial Evidence Does Not Support the Removal
Order
To justify removing Minors from Mother’s home, the
juvenile court was required to find by clear and convincing
evidence that “[t]here is or would be a substantial danger to the
physical health, safety, protection, or physical or emotional well-
being of the minor if the minor were returned home, and there
are no reasonable means by which the minor’s physical health
can be protected without removing the minor from the minor's
parent’s . . . physical custody.” (§ 361, subd. (c)(1).) Although we
hold that the juvenile court’s exercise of jurisdiction was proper,
we do not believe the court’s removal order was adequately
supported.
While substantial evidence supports a determination that a
substantial risk to Minors’ physical safety persisted at the time of
the juvenile court’s ruling, it is undeniable that some of the more
pressing supervision concerns had been mitigated: a latch was
installed on the front door of the family home and the window
Minors used as a point of egress had been boarded up. Under
those circumstances, we do not believe substantial evidence
permitted the juvenile court to find by clear and convincing
evidence that a substantial danger to the health and safety of
Minors still existed. Indeed, the juvenile court did not actually
make such a finding. Instead, the court expressed a view that it
would not return Minors to Mother’s custody until she was
testing clean for marijuana use.7 That is a standard that is

7
As the juvenile court put it: “Honestly what is stopping me
from returning [Minors] to you today are these positive tests.
Because the kids are so young, because they have special needs,

15
untethered to the governing statutory substantial danger rule,
and the removal order is accordingly infirm. (See N.R., supra, 15
Cal.5th at 558-559 [“it is inappropriate to regard a parent’s or
guardian’s excessive use of alcohol or an addictive drug as always
being sufficient, by itself, to show that the parent or guardian is
unable to provide regular care for a young child”].)

C. Mother’s Cal-ICWA Challenge Is Moot
1. Additional background
During their initial interviews with a Department social
worker, Mother and Father each denied any Indian ancestry.
Attached to the original petition were declarations by a
Department social worker stating she had questioned Mother and
she provided no information suggesting either Minor was or may
be an Indian child.8

because the case came in because they weren’t being
appropriately supervised, I need you to test clean, period. I don’t
want to see low levels of marijuana. And I definitely don’t want
to see any positive tests for alcohol. That for me is what is
preventing me from sending them home to you because you—you
know, you’ve already completed so much, it’s not like that other
stuff is going to change. You’ve already learned from that. But
those tests need to be clean, especially because you are going to
be the sole adult supervising them.
8
In support of the amended petition filed in July 2025, a
different Department social worker filed declarations stating she
had questioned Mother and Father and neither provided any
information suggesting either of the Minors were or may be
Indian children.

16
Shortly after the original petition was filed, Mother and
Father submitted ICWA-020 Parental Notification of Indian
Status forms. On her form, Mother indicated she is or may be a
member of either the Blackfoot or Cherokee tribes and also
checked a box indicating that “none” of the potential indicia of
Indian heritage applied. On his form, Father indicated that he is
or may be a member of an Indian tribe. At the initial hearing,
the juvenile court found that “for now, ICWA does not apply”
because Minors were released to Father, and ordered the
Department to investigate both parents’ claims of potential
Indian heritage.
In advance of the jurisdiction hearing, the Department
made a number of Cal-ICWA-related inquiries of various
maternal and paternal relatives. Although the Department was
unable to reach the maternal grandmother, who Mother believed
had Blackfoot heritage, it spoke with the maternal grandfather
who confirmed Cherokee heritage and provided the name of
another relative who might be able to provide more information.
Because Father reported that he has Blackfoot heritage through
his great, great grandmother, the Department attempted without
success to speak with the paternal grandfather. Although the
Department was unsuccessful in reaching a paternal half-sibling,
it managed to speak with a paternal aunt, who denied any Indian
ancestry.
In its jurisdiction and disposition report, the Department
stated it “will continue to make efforts to interview . . . every
known relative on both maternal and paternal sides of the
family[ ] and any other participants as to any Indian ancestry
and provide additional information as it becomes available.”

17
2. Mother’s Cal-ICWA challenge is moot because
the dependency proceedings are on-going
Mother argues the Department failed to comply with its
duty of inquiry with regard to Minors’ possible Indian ancestry
and seeks an order directing full compliance with the inquiry
provisions of Cal-ICWA. That issue is moot because we are
reversing the juvenile court’s removal order and further
proceedings in the juvenile court will be required. If Minors are
returned to Mother’s custody, there is no Cal-ICWA issue, and
even if they are not, the Department will have further
opportunity—as stated in its jurisdiction report—to make Cal-
ICWA inquiry that the juvenile court can and should assess for
sufficiency. Insofar as Mother requests we exercise our discretion
to decide the moot Cal-ICWA issue, we are aware of the pertinent
considerations (In re D.P. (2023) 14 Cal.5th 266) and decline.

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DISPOSITION
The juvenile court’s jurisdiction findings are affirmed. The
juvenile court’s August 7, 2025, order removing Minors from
Mother’s custody is reversed. The cause is remanded with
directions to hold a new disposition hearing to reconsider the
question of removal under section 361, subdivision (c), as
informed by this opinion. At that hearing, the juvenile court may
consider then-existing circumstances in determining whether
removal of the children from Mother’s custody is warranted.

NOT TO BE PUBLISHED IN THE OFFICIAL REPORTS

BAKER, Acting P. J.
We concur:

MOOR, J.

KIM (D.), J.

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