Background
K.B. is an infant who was declared a Child in Need of Assistance (CINA) by the Circuit Court for Baltimore County in September 2024, after the Baltimore County Department of Social Services petitioned based on an incident in which a police officer witnessed K.B.’s mother, H.B., behaving in an abusive and physically threatening manner toward the infant on a public street. Mother was arrested and emergency-petitioned for mental health evaluation after expressing suicidal ideations. K.B. was committed to the Department and placed in a foster home alongside an older sibling. The Department’s report documented an extensive history: Mother’s parental rights had been terminated with respect to multiple other children across several states, and evaluators found she lacked minimally adequate parenting capacity with a poor prognosis.
At the adjudication and disposition hearing, the parties agreed to declare K.B. a CINA and commit her to the Department. As required by statute, the disposition order included pre-printed language stating that the “permanency plan of reunification may be changed” to another plan under specified circumstances. The juvenile court scheduled an initial review hearing for January 2025 and a permanency planning hearing for June 2025. Within five months of disposition, however, at the January 2025 initial review hearing, the Department moved to change the permanency plan from reunification to a concurrent plan of reunification and adoption. A magistrate adopted the recommendation, and the juvenile court overruled Mother’s exceptions, reasoning that a permanency plan of reunification had already been established at disposition and could therefore be changed at the review hearing.
The Appellate Court of Maryland reversed, holding that the juvenile court had established a permanency plan prematurely. The Supreme Court of Maryland granted certiorari to address the statutory framework governing when and how a permanency plan may be determined or changed in a CINA out-of-home placement case.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court of Maryland, in an opinion by Justice Watts, affirmed the Appellate Court. The Court held that the presumptive plan of reunification that arises automatically at a disposition hearing when a child is declared a CINA and placed out of the home is not a permanency plan “determined” under CJ § 3-823. It is merely a statutory default, not the product of the individualized hearing that § 3-823 requires. A proper permanency plan hearing — one that complies with the procedures and notice requirements of CJ § 3-823 and FL § 5-525 — must be held within eleven months of the child’s entry into out-of-home placement. Until that hearing occurs, the plan cannot be changed because no § 3-823 plan has yet been established.
The Court further held that all parties are entitled to advance notice of both the date and time of any hearing at which a permanency plan will be determined or reviewed, and of the fact that the plan may be determined or changed at that hearing. The boilerplate language in the disposition order warning that the reunification plan “may be changed” at some future unspecified point does not satisfy this notice requirement. Adequate notice must be specific and prospective, not generic and indefinite. Because neither a proper § 3-823 permanency plan hearing nor adequate notice had been provided before the initial review hearing at which the plan was changed, the juvenile court’s order was invalid.
Key Takeaways
- The statutory default of reunification that appears in a CINA disposition order is not a permanency plan under CJ § 3-823; the formal permanency planning process must still occur within 11 months of out-of-home placement.
- Juvenile courts cannot change a child’s permanency plan at an initial review hearing before a proper § 3-823 permanency plan hearing has been conducted.
- Boilerplate disposition-order language warning that a plan “may be changed” at some future point does not constitute constitutionally or statutorily adequate notice of a specific hearing at which the plan will actually be determined or altered.
- All parties — including parents — must receive notice of the date, time, and purpose of permanency plan hearings before those hearings take place.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies a procedural question that has practical consequences for thousands of Maryland CINA cases involving out-of-home placements each year. By drawing a clear line between the automatic reunification default at disposition and a formally determined permanency plan under CJ § 3-823, the Court ensures that parents receive a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate progress before a permanent plan — potentially including adoption — is locked in at an early review hearing. The ruling prevents departments of social services from effectively accelerating the permanency planning timeline by treating the disposition order’s boilerplate as an operative permanency plan.
The notice holding is equally significant: it requires courts and departments to give parties specific, advance, hearing-level notice before any permanency determination is made, not merely general warnings embedded in form orders. For practitioners in child welfare and family law, the case reinforces that procedural compliance is not a technicality but a substantive protection for parental rights at a critical stage of CINA proceedings.