Background
O and E entered the Oregon Department of Human Services’ custody in March 2024 after E was found wandering outside unsupervised for many hours. The juvenile court later took dependency jurisdiction over both children as to mother because she did not understand their basic needs and lacked the parenting skills necessary to care for them safely. It took jurisdiction over O as to father because he lacked necessary parenting skills and was subject to parole restrictions barring contact with minors.
At a September and October 2025 permanency hearing, the juvenile court found that ODHS had made reasonable reunification efforts but that neither parent had made sufficient progress. It changed the children’s plans from reunification to adoption. Both parents appealed only the reasonable-efforts determinations. Father had declined court-ordered services and remained out of compliance with post-prison supervision for much of the case. Mother, meanwhile, underwent evaluations that diagnosed an intellectual disability, but her application for developmental-disability services was not accepted until shortly before the permanency hearing.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals upheld the determination that ODHS made reasonable efforts to reunify father with O. ODHS referred him to services directed at the jurisdictional bases, but he consistently refused services, did not complete a psychosexual evaluation or sexual-risk assessment, and maintained that he did not need sex-offender treatment. Although ODHS initially did not offer to pay for that treatment, father had not identified cost as the reason for refusing it, and ODHS offered payment once it learned of that barrier.
The court reached the opposite conclusion as to mother. Although ODHS made efforts to obtain services for her, she did not receive the evaluation and referral necessary to access developmental-disability services until August 2025, only weeks before the permanency hearing. Because those services were critical to determining whether she could learn to understand and meet her children’s substantial needs, she had no reasonable opportunity to use them or demonstrate progress. The court therefore reversed the judgments changing O’s and E’s plans away from reunification.
Key Takeaways
- Reasonable reunification efforts must continue long enough to permit a meaningful assessment of whether a parent can make sufficient progress.
- A parent’s refusal to participate may support a reasonable-efforts finding when the agency offered services addressing the adjudicated bases for jurisdiction.
- When an intellectual disability affects parenting capacity, a last-minute referral to appropriate disability services may be insufficient even if resource limitations contributed to the delay.
Why It Matters
The decision emphasizes that the reasonable-efforts inquiry examines not merely whether services were offered, but whether the parent had a genuine opportunity to use appropriate services before reunification was abandoned. An agency cannot support a plan change through a progress assessment made before disability-related services central to the parent’s ability to improve have meaningfully begun.