Child’s best interests; In re White; In re Olive/Metts Minors; Failure to provide a respondent with more intensive mental health services; A respondent’s responsibility to participate in offered services

The court held that the evidence supported the trial court’s finding that termination was in the child’s (LAY) best interests, and that the trial court did not clearly err in failing to provide respondent-mother with more intensive mental health services. Thus, it affirmed the termination order. In that order, “the trial court explicitly found that termination was in LAY’s best interests because of respondent’s on-going mental health issues, housing and income instability, noncompliance with her service plan, and failure to visit with the child since” 12/22. It additionally “found that LAY was bonded to her foster family and that they were willing to adopt her.” The court concluded the record supported the trial court’s decision. As to respondent’s argument that the trial court’s failure to “provide her with more intensive mental health services” meant that it necessarily erred in terminating her rights, she “objected to the service plan for the first time at termination—about two years later after receiving the plan; thus, there was no opportunity for the trial court to order additional services or make any accommodations. But even if she had timely challenged her services, respondent must still ‘establish that she would have fared better if other services had been offered.’” The court noted that throughout the case, she “often refused to participate in court-ordered services, including not attending therapy for more than a year prior to the hearing, and failed to complete any of her court-ordered services. She also stopped visiting with LAY, and the caseworkers were unable to get in contact with her. Importantly, respondent had ‘a commensurate responsibility . . . to participate in the services that are offered.’” The court found that in light of her “outright refusal to cooperate with almost any aspect of her treatment plan,” she failed to show “she would have fared better if other services had been offered.”