Legal consummation of the adoption of an eligible child by a court of competent jurisdiction: or
Placement of the eligible child in an adoptive home (including the conversion of a foster home into an adoptive home for the specific child) under an interlocutory decree by a court of competent jurisdiction.

Allegation

Charge or complaint about an act or condition which needs to be proved at a hearing.

Case Assessment

The process whereby information gathered in the course of a case concerning a child, the child’s family, and the circumstances of the lives is analyzed and interpreted by professional staff responsible for case management. Case assessment leads to case decision-making and goal-oriented casework activity directed toward alleviating the problems that resulted in the need for agency involvement with the family.

Case Plan

The term “Case Plan” means a written document which includes at least the following: A description of the type of home or institution in which the child is to be placed, including a discussion of the appropriateness of the placement and how the agency that is responsible for the child plans to carry out the judicial determination made with respect to the child in accordance with federal law requiring that the child’s removal form the home be the result of a judicial determination to the effect that continuation in the home would be contrary to the child’s welfare. It is also a plan for assuring that the child receives proper care and that services are provided to the parents’ home that facilitate return of the child to the child’s own home or the permanent placement of the child, and addresses the needs of the child while in foster care, including a discussion of the appropriateness of the services that have been provided to the child under the plan.

Case Record

Written information and documentation of facts to be preserved as evidence either for service delivery, accountability for court proceedings, or both. The case record should be considered as the agency’s business record.

Child in Need of Services (CHINS)

A child is a child in need of services if before is eighteenth birthday:

The child’s physical or mental condition is seriously impaired or seriously endangered as a result of the inability, refusal, or neglect of the child’s parent, guardian, or custodian to supply the child with necessary food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, or supervision;

Child Placing Agency

Any person, association or corporation who advertises himself or itself or holds himself or itself out as placing or finding homes for or otherwise disposing of children or who places or assists in placing in homes of person other than relatives or causes or assists in causing the placement for adoption or disposal otherwise of children.

Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA)

A community volunteer:

Who has completed a training program approved by the court; and
Who has been appointed by a court to protect the interest of a child and to provide that child with services requested by the court.

Custodian

The caretaker with whom the child resides. This includes any person responsible for the child’s welfare who is employed by a public or private residential school or foster child facility.

D-E

Detention

Placement of a child who is or appears to be a child in need of services in a shelter care facility.

Detention Hearing

A detention hearing must be held within 48 hours of the time of detention or placement for a child alleged to be a CHINS and taken into custody. The 48-hour limit excludes Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays.

After the court has established a time for the detention hearing, a formal written “Notice of Hearing” must be given or sent to the parent, guardian, or custodian, and also to the child, specifying time, place, and purpose of the detention hearing. Indiana statute does not specify to whom responsibility for this written notification falls.

The purpose of this hearing is to show that removal of the child was necessary for one of the five reasons listed:

Detention is necessary to protect the child.
The child is unlikely to appear before the juvenile court for subsequent proceedings.
The child has a reasonable basis for requesting not to be released.
The parent, guardian, or custodian cannot be located or is unable or unwilling to take custody of the child.
The act involved is murder or a Class A or B felony.

And to show, if applicable, that continued placement is required, pending hearings on a CHINS petition. At this hearing, the court may release the child to the parent, guardian, or custodian, or may continue the placement (detention) of the child pending further hearing.

Disposition

The decision which a judge makes regarding the child’s care, treatment, or rehabilitation; participation by the parent, guardian, custodian in the plan of care for the child; efforts made, if the child is a child in need of services, to prevent the child’s removal from or to reunite the child with child’s parent, guardian, or custodian in accordance with federal law; and family services that were offered and provided to a child in need of services of the child’s parent, guardian, or custodian in accordance with federal law.

Emancipation

Release of a child by a juvenile court from the control of the person or agency having legal responsibility for the child.

F-H

Fact-Finding Hearing

A fact-finding hearing is held when the allegations in a CHINS petition are denied. It is during this hearing that the DCS must prove the allegations in the petition if a child is to be adjudicated a CHINS.

The fact-finding hearing represents the “adjudicatory” portion of the hearing process, as opposed, for example, to the “dispositional” portion. Following this example further, in the fact-finding hearing, the child may be found to be a CHINS; in the dispositional hearing, wardship may be granted and the child ordered to be placed in a foster home or any other dispositional alternative that may be available to the court.

Failure to Thrive Syndrome

A serious medical condition usually seen in children under one year of age. The child’s height, weight, and motor development fall significantly short of the average growth rate of normally developing children. In the majority of cases, no medical cause can be found in children with this syndrome. The syndrome appears to be caused by a disturbed parent/child relationship that results in the parent being unable to meet his or her child’s emotional and physical needs, including, most often, failure to feed the infant.

Family Services

Services provided to:

prevent a child from being removed from a parent, guardian, or custodian;
reunite the child with a parent, guardian, or custodian;
Implement a permanent plan of adoption, guardianship, or emancipation of a child.

Foster Home

A place where an individual dwells and provides care and supervision as a substitute family:

for compensation;
for twenty-four (24) hours a day; and
to a child who (a) is not the child, stepchild, grandchild, niece, nephew, or sibling of the individual providing care and supervision; (b) is separated from the child’s parent, stepparent, guardian, custodian, or other relative; and (c) Is receiving care and supervision under an order of a juvenile court.

The term does not include children’s homes or child caring institutions.

Foster Parent

The person or persons to whom a license to operate, maintain, or conduct a foster home is granted by the Department of Child Services and the spouse of the person so licensed, if living within the foster home described in said license.

Guardian Ad Litem (GAL)

A person appointed by a court to represent and protect the best interest of a child and to provide the child with services requested by the court. The GAL need not necessarily be an attorney.

Home Study

Process: Also called family preparation. A process through which potential foster or adoptive parents educate themselves about the rewards and challenges of foster and/or adoptive parenting and through which they make a decision about the types of children they feel they can parent. The process through which individuals, with the help of an assessor/social worker, looks at their skills, life experiences, strengths, and limitations to determine if foster care and adoption are right for them. It is also the assessor’s responsibility to assure basic child safety will be provided in the home-through collection of police checks, references, physical examination reports, and home safety audits.
Document: The written document on which all information gathered throughout the home study process is recorded. This document will also indicate the recommended status of the application to foster/adopt (pending, approved, denied. The completed home study document is often used for matching approved/licensed families with children in need of placement. Court personnel sometimes see this document.

I-L

Immunity

Immunity refers to the legal protection from civil or criminal liability provided to a person making a report of child abuse or neglect.

Informal Adjustment

A program of care, treatment, and rehabilitation established without involving the formal procedures of the juvenile court.

Independent Living

“Independent Living” is an arrangement in which a child fourteen years or older resides and is partially or fully responsible for his individual living environment. An “Independent living arrangement” is any living environment provided by an agency which includes service programs and activities to assist youth fourteen years of age or older to make the transition from substitute care to independent living.

Initial Hearing

This hearing represents the first of several steps in the adjudication and disposition of a CHINS case. The initial hearing may be a separate hearing, or it may be the first part of a hearing that includes fact-finding and dispositional hearings.

Legal Risk Placement

This is usually the placement of a child into a dually approved (foster/adopt) home. The child enters the home officially as a foster child. However, certain clinical factors at the time of placement lead the agency to believe that reunification of the child and birth parent is unlikely and that child will at some future point be in need of an alternative permanent placement (adoption). The placement into a “legal risk” family indicates the agency’s and family’s intent to have the foster family adopt the child in question should parental rights be terminated. (Sometimes parental rights have been terminated, but the case is under legal appeal.)

Lifebook

A scrapbook, diary, or log kept for or by the child that recreates the child’s personal history, including birth, placements, important persons in his/her life, personal achievements, and information about the child’s experiences in foster care and adoption.

M-P

Minimum Level of Sufficient Care

Community standards that are developed by the court and the county agency with input from other community sources. These state the minimum level of acceptable child-care practices in that particular community. The standards should take into account cultural norms and practices, as well as accurate information about child development. The standards are used to make decisions about what constitutes sufficient risk to warrant CPS (Child Protective Services) agency involvement. Standards may also affect placement decisions. This is not the same standard as “the best interest of the child”.

Omission

An occurrence, in the context of child protection service, in which the parent, guardian, or custodian allowed that person’s child to receive any injury that the parent, guardian, or custodian had a reasonable opportunity to prevent or mitigate.

Open Adoption

The practice of providing information to a child’s birth parents, adoptive parents, and/or the child as the child matures. Most adoptions in the United States have some degree of openness, from very little written information to full disclosure and face-to-face contact before, during and after the adoption.

Parent

A biological or adoptive parent. This term, unless otherwise specified in the Juvenile Code, refers to both parents regardless of their martial status.

Parties

Those persons who are deemed necessary by law to be participants in a court action. In a CHINS case, the parties include the child and legal parent or guardians. All parties are entitled to legal representation at all stages of the proceedings, and if indigent, are entitled to a court-appointed attorney.

Per Diem Rate

The amount that foster parents are paid per day for the care of county wards in their home.

Periodic Case Review

The scheduled case review of each child who is placed in the child’s home or in out-of-home care under a dispositional decree. This review is to be conducted no less frequently than every 6 months by a court.

Permanency Hearing

The 12-month formal court hearings for children for whom reasonable efforts continue to apply. These hearings are held every 12 months from:

the date of the child’s removal from the child’s own home or the date of the dispositional hearing, whichever comes first:
more often, if ordered by the court; or
Not more than 30 days after the court finds that reasonable efforts to preserve or reunify the child’s family are not required.

Petition

A formal pleading, containing allegations against or about the juvenile, used to initiate formal court proceedings.

Predispositional Report

A report prepared by the caseworker to aid the juvenile court in arriving at a disposition regarding the case of a child before the court.

Preliminary Inquiry

A written report prepared by a court intake officer containing family, school, and social history in regard to a juvenile. This report is filed with the court and forms the basis upon which the court decides whether a formal petition is necessary.

Preplacement Preventive Services

The services designed to prevent unnecessary placements of children into foster care or other out-of-home care.

Putative

Alleged or assumed.

Post Legalization Services

Services offered to an adoptive family following legalization of the adoptive placement. Many adoptive families of children with special needs require continued support and services from the agency. Examples of these services are information and referral, education, group counseling, respite care, residential treatment, parent support groups and advocacy.

Pre-Placement Visit

In either foster care or adoption, a series of visits are made by the child to the prospective home in order to prepare the child for the eventual move and lessen the trauma to the child. In all adoptive placements and where possible in foster care, there should be a series of visits designed to familiarize the child with the home, family, and surrounding community. The younger the child, the more frequent the visits and the quicker the move; the older the child, the slower and longer the pace of the visits. However the pace and frequency vary from case to case and must take into consideration the child’s need’s and developmental level.

Q-Z

Referee

The referee is an attorney assigned by a judge to hear cases on the judge’s behalf. A decision by a referee is finalized when the judge signs the recommendation.

Referee’s Recommendation

The decision of a referee following a court hearing. The decision becomes final only when the judge signs the order, signifying his/her approval of the decision.

Relative Home

The home of relatives of a child in need of placement which may be approved by the local office as a foster home. Such approval qualifies the caretaker relative to receive payment for the child’s care. Approved relative homes are subject to the same standards as licensed foster homes.

Service Referral Agreements (SRA)

If CPS does not seek court involvement after substantiating a report but recommends voluntary participation in family or rehabilitative services for a period of not more than six (6) months, the person accused of child abuse or neglect may enter into a voluntary services referral agreement with the local CPS. The person must successfully participate in and complete any family or rehabilitative service recommended by CPS. In the event the same family is later involved in an informal adjustment program or a CHINS proceeding, CPS must provide the court with information on the earlier services referral agreement.

Sexual Abuse

Sexual activity where the victim is a minor. The perpetrator may be an adult or a minor. Sexual abuse may include fondling, intercourse, oral sex, child pornography and/or forcing the child to watch others engage in sexual activity.

Special Needs

Special needs children include;

a child two (2) years of age or older who is a member of a commonly recognized minority group;
any child six (6) years of age or older; or
A child who is a member of a sibling group of two (2) or more children and who must be placed together with the sibling group in the same home. (NOTE: At least one (1) child in a sibling group must be six (6) years old. In a commonly recognized minority group of siblings, at least one (1) child must be two (2) years old.); or
a child with a medical condition or physical challenge, as determined by a physician licensed to practice medicine in Indiana or another state or territory; or
A child with mental or emotional challenge as determined by a psychiatrist or a physician licensed to practice in Indiana or another state or territory.

Status Offense

Acts of delinquencies that are not crimes for adults. The status offense under the juvenile code includes running away, truancy, habitual disobedience, and curfew violations.

Subpoena

A document requiring a person to appear at a certain court on a certain day to give testimony in a specified case.

Surrogate Parent

A person assigned to look after the educational needs and rights of handicapped children whose parents are unknown or unavailable. The administrator of the special education program that an eligible child attends makes the assignment.

Voluntary Termination of Parental Rights

A voluntary surrender is a legal document signed by parents to transfer custody of a child to an agency for purposes of adoption.