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In re Dependency of C. C.3/1/1999
al capabilities to be in the normal range. By contrast, Father had scored below average in intellectual functioning on an earlier IQ test, indicating that he was significantly mentally retarded. Dr. Johnson stated that the results from the latter test were impossible to fake, and opined that Father "was faking that he had poor IQ" in the earlier test to obtain certain funding. Id. at 25. He then stated that Father's potential to learn is in the normal range. Nonetheless, Dr. Johnson observed that Father "had some significant social, cultural training gaps . . . from his . . . lack of experiences that would help him understand how to make better decisions." Id. at 23. Dr. Johnson reported that Father had "a lack of awareness of the problems and the issues he would encounter as a parent trying to co-parent with {Mother}." Id. at 14-15. Dr. Johnson opined that Mother would need constant supervision 24 hours a day if she were to be allowed to parent C. C., and that Father, because of his own limitations, would not be a suitable person to supervise Mother. Because the parents planned to remain married, Dr. Johnson saw them as a "system that's going to be parenting." 3 Report of Proceedings at 34, 87. Accordingly, Dr. Johnson recommended that there be no unsupervised visitation between C. C. and either parent. Although Dr. Johnson recognized that a person with Father's non-organic problems hypothetically could overcome them with sufficient hands-on, ongoing training, he nonetheless opined that, in this case, Father has an "extreme learning disadvantage," id. at 68, and "a long learning curve." Id. at 69. Thus, although Father is educable, he could not learn the necessary skills in time to meet the developmental needs of a growing child.
Dr. Johnson concluded that reunification with C. C. was not possible in the foreseeable future for either Mother or Father.
On December 6, 1995, approximately 2 weeks after C. C. was born, the State filed a dependency petition, alleging that C. C. had "no parent, guardian or custodian capable of adequately caring for {him.}" Clerk's Papers at 2. The parents agreed that C. C. would live with Mother's Aunt Sharon and Uncle Robert. On May 1, 1996, after an uncontested hearing, the dependency court declared C. C. dependent and placed him with Aunt Sharon and Uncle Robert. The court also ordered Mother and Father to participate in individual and couples counseling, to obtain parenting skills instructions, and to receive public health nurse services.
Gallagher "supplied the parents with information about where they could arrange {individual and couples} counseling {and} gave them a list of places where they could go." 1 Report of Proceedings at 172. She also inquired of the Division of Developmental Disabilities and the public health nurse about a slower-paced, more detailed parenting class to accommodate Mother and Father's disabilities, but was unable to find such a class. Before the dependency hearing, Mother and Father attended parenting classes at the public health department once per week for approximately 7 weeks.
Ruth Ohm, a home support specialist who has been supervising visits between parents and children for 20 years, supervised some of Mother and Father's visits with C. C. between January 1996 and April 1996. Although Ohm was not given a specific plan or program to implement, she testified that she understood her duties to include helping Mother and Father develop parenting skills during the supervised visitations. According to Ohm, the hands-on training "didn't go well{,}" because Mother and Father could not "grasp on to just the basic things of feeding the baby and changing him without being asked." 2 Report of Proceedings at 148. As a
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