Background
Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services petitioned to remove SHD shortly after the child’s August 2024 birth. Hospital staff questioned the mother’s cognitive ability to provide basic care without prompting. The father reported multiple mental-health conditions, refused treatment, and displayed volatile and aggressive behavior. The child was placed in foster care, and the parents were offered mental-health services, parenting education, and supervised parenting time.
The mother participated in services but continued to struggle with safely applying parenting skills. The father participated more sporadically, resisted recommended mental-health treatment, and was limited to virtual parenting time after an incident in which he displayed a knife and made a slashing motion near a foster-care worker. After four consolidated hearings, the trial court found that reasonable reunification efforts had been made, statutory grounds supported termination, and termination was in the child’s best interests.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed. It rejected the mother’s unpreserved due-process claims under plain-error review. She received written notice of her appellate rights and adequate notice of the termination proceedings. The trial court permissibly suspended her parenting time temporarily after unexplained bruising was discovered on the child and promptly provided postdeprivation review. Although the Department later erred by unilaterally pausing her visits while seeking another supervisor, the mother did not show that the interruption affected the termination outcome.
The court also upheld the finding that the Department made reasonable reunification efforts for both parents. The mother received accommodations for her cognitive disability, including individual instruction, extra processing time, simplified materials with pictures, repeated lessons, quizzes, modeling, and individualized feedback. Services addressing the father’s mental-health conditions were offered, but his resistance to treatment and limited participation impeded further progress. Given his ongoing emotional instability and safety risks, virtual parenting time was a reasonable limitation, and the Department’s failure to offer separate marijuana-abuse services did not render its overall efforts unreasonable.
As to the father, clear and convincing evidence supported termination under MCL 712A.19b(3)(j) because his anger, emotional outbursts, altercations, resistance to services, and inability to demonstrate sustained stability created a reasonable likelihood of harm if the child were returned to him. Termination was also in the child’s best interests because the father lacked a bond with the child, had deficient parenting skills, declined virtual visits, and could not provide a safe and stable home, while the child was thriving and bonded with a foster family willing to adopt.
Key Takeaways
- A child-welfare agency may satisfy its accommodation obligations to a cognitively disabled parent through individualized instruction, simplified visual materials, repetition, extra processing time, modeling, and comprehension checks.
- The Department’s unilateral suspension of the mother’s parenting time violated the statutory requirement that the court make the necessary safety findings, but reversal was unwarranted because she failed to establish outcome-determinative prejudice.
- A parent’s resistance to mental-health treatment and failure to benefit from offered services may support findings that reunification efforts were reasonable, the child would face harm if returned, and termination serves the child’s best interests.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates how Michigan courts evaluate reasonable reunification efforts when a parent has cognitive or mental-health disabilities. The agency need not follow a single prescribed accommodation plan, but the record must show that services were meaningfully adapted to the parent’s needs.
It also distinguishes between procedural error and reversible error. An agency cannot independently suspend court-ordered parenting time, yet an unpreserved violation will not undo a termination order unless the parent demonstrates that the error affected the proceeding’s outcome.