The California Supreme Court recently faced the recurring challenge of parental drug abuse in juvenile dependency proceedings, which generally involve children who are neglected or abused by their parents or guardians and become “dependents” of the courts. One court in San Diego had come up with a treatment program called the Substance Abuse Recovery Management System (SARMS) aimed at parents suspected of having drug or alcohol abuse issues.
Parents in dependency proceedings could be required to complete the SARMS program as part of a family reunification plan. Now this all probably sounds fairly reasonable, but in the California Supreme Court’s own words, the San Diego court also included an extra “stick” to encourage parents to complete the program. Parents who failed to comply with SARMS were subject to contempt citations and jail time. Indeed, “the ‘stick’ proved to be quite large in this case, in which a mother was sentenced to 300 days in custody for failing to enter drug treatment.”
In response to the San Diego County Health & Human Services Agency’s suggestion that it would be beneficial for a juvenile court to be able to use “brief periods of incarceration for contempt”, the court replied that there was no authorization or guidance in the books to make that possible.
- Opinion in the Case (FindLaw)
- Silicon Valley Mercury News: A call for swift change for juvenile dependency courts
- California Legislature: California Juvenile Dependency Laws
- Terminating Parental Rights (FindLaw)
- Checklist: Grounds for Terminating Parental Rights (FindLaw)
- Family Law Overview (provided by Kearney, Freeman, Fogarty & Joshi, PLLC)
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