Los Angeles County Department of Children & Family Services v. J.M.

[988]Opinion

ROTHSCHILD, J. The juvenile court found 13-year-old R.M. and his 10-year-old sister, S.M., to be dependent children of the court under Welfare and Institutions Code section 300, subdivision (b),1 ordered them removed from their mother’s custody and placed them in separate foster homes. We conclude that the evidence is insufficient to support the petition as to mother.2

PROCEEDINGS BELOW

A 2004 family law order awarded custody of R.M. and his sister, S.M., to mother and visitation rights to their father. In June 2008 the Los Angeles County Department of Family and Children Services (DCFS) filed a petition in juvenile court only under section 300, subdivision (b) alleging that R.M. and S.M. had suffered and were at substantial risk of suffering serious physical harm as a result of their parents’ inability to adequately supervise or protect them. The record does not disclose how the family came to the attention of the DCFS. Mother and father waived their right to a trial on the allegations and the court sustained the petition on the basis of the reports submitted by the DCFS.

The court found that “periodic episodes of inadequate supervision of the children” caused by mother and father’s “divergent approaches to parenting” resulted in S.M.’s exposure to “inappropriate sexual conduct” by her brother, R.M. The court further found that mother’s “physical and emotional problems [and depression] . . . periodically render her unable to provide adequate care and supervision for the children” thereby placing the children “at risk of physical and emotional harm and damage.”

DISCUSSION

Mother contends the evidence was insufficient to sustain the petition as to her.

To be sufficient to sustain a juvenile dependency petition the evidence must be “ ‘reasonable, credible, and of solid value’ ” such that the court reasonably could find the child to be a dependent of the court by clear and convincing evidence. (In re Angelia P. (1981) 28 Cal.3d 908, 924 [171 Cal.Rptr. 637, 623 P.2d 198].) On appeal, we review the record as a whole in the light most favorable to the court’s order and we indulge every inference in favor of the court’s decision so long as those inferences are “ ‘a product of logic and