I haven't written a post for a while because I haven't really had anything to report.
But this week, we learned a little but of information about Isaiah's case. We knew the termination of parents' rights had been appealed by the parents' lawyers. We were told the appeal should take at least 6 months and could stretch out as long as 9-12 months. Most times, appeals are not won and the termination stays in place meaning the child (Isaiah) would be available for adoption.
There really aren't any updates during this process. We don't really have the details, but as best as we can tell, our case sits in someone's office waiting for the appeal committee to get to it. I'm sure they have quite a few cases to deal with and I would imagine the people on this committee have many other responsibilities besides sitting on the appeals committee.
But, this week we did learn that the committee is reviewing our case currently. The only way we are able to know that much was because the committee requested more information from the caseworker about some details of the court proceedings. It seems there was a detail overlooked in the dad's case. This case has went through two caseworkers (the first one being fairly incompetent resulting in her being fired) and while the first caseworker was on the case, she made a mistake. Thankfully, our second caseworker knows more about her job and is much more thorough. She found this mistake and addressed it as best as she could with the help of DCS's attorney. Hopefully their efforts will be enough for the appeal committee to feel the dad was treated fairly and under proper procedures.
But, its possible the committee could decide this mistake is enough to warrant overturning the termination of dad's rights. If that were to happen, the dad's case would start from the beginning again. He would have to be offered services like counseling and possibly visits (if he jumped through several hoops first). I don't think he would participate enough for anything to happen like visits, but it's scary to think that possibility is there. The caseworker would have to wait 6 months and then she could refile termination.
The caseworker was confident that things will go smoothly in the mom's case and termination will be upheld.
So, this could be a bump in the road, or things could sail on through smoothly. Hopefully we will have an answer one way or another in the next few weeks.
