|
Here's my guess about what is going on: in order to get a clear legal go-ahead to terminate parental rights, the law says that DSS must show that it has made "reasonable efforts" to reunify the child and the parent. So what is reasonable, you ask? Aha! Nobody knows. So what DSS does almost 100% of the time is make EXTRAORDINARY efforts to reunify the child and the parent, so that nobody can come back on appeal and overturn the case by arguing that reasonable efforts weren't made.
It sounds to me like the SW is trying to get Punky's case ready to go to TPR by offering bdad a whole raft of 'reasonable' efforts. I bet you he'll get the full menu of offered help: therapy and addiction counseling and parenting classes and a huge number of visits. Hours and hours and hours of appointments, actually, that anybody would be hard pressed to complete, much less somebody who is only half-heartedly committed to parenting will do. She'll give him a big, big, BIG spool of rope on which to hang himself.
Then when he stops coming to visits and washes out of the parenting class (which I bet he will), the legal case will be clear and the state can proceed on clear grounds to TPR.
So hang on. This last bit is the roughest part. But by the end of it, either you'll know that Punky's dad is serious about parenting and really should have her back, or it will be crystal clear to everybody that he's not up to the job. Your role in this will be to make sure that success or failure is 100% up to Punky's dad. Have her there on time for visits, drive her to parenting class, and be warm and friendly to bdad. If he rucks it up, which he may well do, the court will then be able to see clearly that it was his failure and not DSS's.
|