In re D.L.

235 N.E.3d 32

2022 IL App (1st) 220222

IN RE D.L. Jr. & C.L, Minors,

(The People of the State of Illinois, Petitioner-Appellee,

v.T.S., Respondent-Appellant).

No. 1-22-0222

Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, SIXTH DIVISION.

Filed November 4, 2022

Appeal from the Circuit Court of Cook County, Nos. 14 JA 338 & 14 JA 339, The Honorable Peter Vilkelis, Judge, presiding.

Sharone R. Mitchell Jr., Public Defender, of Chicago (Brittany M. Barclae and Samuel M. Hayman, Assistant Public Defenders, of counsel), for appellant.

Kimberly M. Foxx, State’s Attorney, of Chicago (Enrique Abraham, Gina DiVito, and Victoria L. Kennedy, Assistant State’s Attorneys, of counsel), for the People.

Charles P. Golbert, Public Guardian, of Chicago (Kass A. Plain and Christopher J. Williams, of counsel), guardian ad litem.

OPINION

JUSTICE TAILOR delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

¶ 1 Respondent-appellant T.S. appeals from an order of the circuit court of Cook County finding her unfit to parent D.L. Jr., and C.L., minors. For the following reasons, we reverse the judgment of the circuit court.¹

¶ 2 I. BACKGROUND

¶ 3 T.S. is the mother of D.L. Jr., a boy born in September 2012, and C.L., a boy born in August 2013. The boys’ father is not a party to this appeal.

¶ 4 On April 2, 2014, the State filed petitions for adjudication of wardship for the boys, alleging that they were abused and neglected pursuant to section 2-3(1)(a), (1)(b), and (2)(ii) of the Juvenile Court Act of 1987 (705 ILCS 405/2-3(1)(a)-(b), (2)(ii) (West 2014)). The boys were removed from T.S.’s care and placed with their foster parents, K.C. and N.S.

¶ 5 On October 6, 2014, the circuit court found both boys neglected due to an injurious environment and abused due to a substantial risk of physical injury. The circuit court also found that D.L. was neglected due to lack of care. The basis for the circuit court's findings was D.L.’s nonorganic failure to thrive diagnosis, as well as domestic violence between T.S. and the minors’ father that resulted in T.S. locking herself and D.L. in the bedroom with a knife and threatening to kill herself. T.S. had been drinking and used alcohol to calm down. T.S. was subsequently hospitalized for psychiatric care.

¶ 6 In December 2014, the trial court held a permanency planning hearing. A permanency goal was set for the boys to return home within 12 months. That goal was repeatedly re-set at periodic permanency planning hearings until August 31, 2018, when the circuit court changed the goal to substitute care pending court de- termination on termination of parental rights. This court denied T.S.’s petition for leave to appeal the change in permanency-goal.

¶ 7 In 2019, the State filed a supplemental petition for the appointment of a guardian with the right to consent to adoption. The petition alleged that T.S. was unfit to parent the boys under section 1(D)(b) of the Adoption Act (750 ILCS 50/1(D)(b) (West 2018)) because she failed to maintain a reasonable degree of interest in, concern for, or responsibility for the boys and, under section 1(D)(m) of the Adoption Act (id. § 1(D)(m)), because she failed to make reasonable efforts to correct the conditions that were the basis for removal of the boys or failure to make reasonable progress toward the return of the boys within any nine-month period after the adjudication of neglect. A hearing was held on T.S.’s fitness to parent the boys. The evidence adduced at the hearing is summarized as follows.²

¶ 8 Kathye Sellers testified that she was a caseworker with Children’s Home & Aid (Agency) who had been assigned to this case since 2014. T.S. was recommended for numerous services, including a parenting capacity assessment, parent coaching, parenting classes, individual therapy, domestic violence services, and drug education and screening. T.S. successfully completed each of these services. In 2017, T.S. was referred for child-parent psychotherapy (CPP) to improve her bond with the boys. However, the CPP therapist left the Agency after three or four sessions, before the CPP could be completed. In 2018, due to ongoing attachment issues between the boys and T.S., the Agency recommended them for family counseling with Dr. Julie Brosnan, the boys’ therapist at DePaul Family and Community Services (DePaul). In May 2018, family counseling was terminated, and visits between T.S. and the boys were suspended.

¶ 9 T.S. had been consistent with visits since 2015, about nine months after the opening of the case. In 2015, visitation was increased to twice a week for two hours. The visits were initially supervised before eventually becoming unsupervised. The visits were always held at the Agency. After three to four unsupervised visits in December 2016, supervised visitation was reinstated because K.C. reported negative impacts on the boys’ behavior. In April 2017, the circuit court entered another order for unsupervised visits, but that order was not implemented until November 2017. In November 2017, T.S. and the boys began having unsupervised visits twice a week. After family therapy started in 2018, family therapy constituted one of the visits. In March 2018, visitation was changed back to supervised due to D.L.’s behavior. Visitation was subsequently suspended completely, again due to the boys’ behavior.

¶ 10 Sellers observed several visits. The minors could be clingy toward the foster parents before visits, but once they were separated from the foster parents, their visits with T.S. went well. D.L. wanted to visit with T.S., but C.L. would be shy. Sellers never observed the extreme behavior in the boys that K.C. reported. The boys did not understand that T.S. was their natural mother. The Agency did not give T.S. the opportunity to have visits at locations outside of the Agency, other than joint birthday parties that T.S. threw for the boys (whose birthdays are one month apart) at Chuck E. Cheese.

¶ 11 Sellers received letters from Dr. Brosnan recommending against CPP and family therapy. Nevertheless, the circuit court asked Dr. Brosnan to provide family therapy and she agreed. After six sessions of family therapy were completed, Dr. Brosnan sent Sellers a letter stating that family therapy was terminated due to lack of improvement in the boys’ behavior.

¶ 12 Dr. Brosnan testified that she was a supervising psychologist on D.L.’s and C.L.’s case at DePaul. The foster parents contacted DePaul in 2015 for D.L. to receive comprehensive services. At that time, Dr. Brosnan understood that the foster parents were hoping to adopt the boys but later came to realize that the goal for the case was to return the boys to T.S.

¶ 13 Initially, D.L. was brought in for excessive whining and tantrums. By the summer of 2016, D.L. had made enough progress to consider discontinuing services, but the foster parents soon reported that D.L. was experiencing escalated behavior issues such as bedwetting, aggression, and sexualized behaviors, so services continued. C.L. began services in 2017 after showing anxiety and bedwetting. This therapy sometimes involved the foster parents, but not T.S.

¶ 14 Dr. Brosnan, who was not trained in CPP, wrote letters to Sellers recommending against CPP. CPP is a "trauma intervention" therapy that is recommended for children who have been separated from their birth parents. It involves creating a narrative around birth history and the history of neglect or abandonment. CPP was recommended by T.S.’s individual therapist and in a 2017 parenting capacity assessment for T.S., as well as in the psychological evaluations for the boys from Children’s Research Triangle (CRT). Dr. Brosnan acknowledged that the three or four sessions of CPP in 2017 were not sufficient to show its efficacy.

¶ 15 In 2018, at the circuit court’s request, Dr. Brosnan agreed to provide another type of family therapy to T.S., the foster parents, and the boys. The type of family therapy led by Dr. Brosnan is Child Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE), which employed worksheets to encourage interaction and focused on strategies to increase the boys’ compliance and de crease problematic behaviors. The CARE therapy was child-led, meaning that the minors chose the activity and with which adults to interact and involved the foster parents and T.S. The minors interacted with everyone. T.S. was "passive, but pleasant" and interacted silently with the boys throughout the six family therapy sessions. Dr. Brosnan stated that she gave both the foster parents and T.S. a handout with "sentence stems" to facilitate conversation with the boys, but T.S. did not utilize it. T.S. did not do anything during the sessions to trigger the boys’ behavior, nor did the boys act out during the therapy sessions. Dr. Brosnan never saw the boys display any of the extreme behaviors reported by the foster parents during the family therapy sessions, although once during a visit D.L. touched himself inappropriately for approximately 15 seconds, and T.S. did not redirect him.

¶ 16 Dr. Brosnan stated that she did not write a letter to Sellers recommending against family therapy. Counsel for T.S. introduced a letter from Dr. Brosnan stating that "due to judge’s request for DePaul Family and Community Services to provide family therapy *** family therapy is not recommended." Dr. Brosnan stated that this letter referred to CPP.

¶ 17 Dr. Brosnan testified that T.S. had to travel "a far way" to attend the CARE sessions at DePaul. The foster parents also attended every CARE session.

¶ 18 Dr. Brosnan terminated family therapy after six sessions over the course of three months. At first, Dr. Brosnan testified that family therapy was terminated because the minors’ psychological distress was not decreasing, and she believed the stress of the visits was influencing the boys’ symptoms. When Dr. Brosnan was later recalled to the stand, she stated that family therapy was terminated due T.S.’s failure to progress because T.S. was not interacting with the...