Consult a CPS Defense Attorney When Assistance Needed
Video Transcribed: What does a post-adjudication petition mean in your deprived case? Oklahoma Child Protective Services Attorney Ryan Cannonie, with CPS investigation defense. One thing I see happen occasionally in cases and as a prosecutor, I filed these occasionally.
Sometimes we have a case where you’ve been accused of whatever the allegations are. You agree you say, yeah, I have, let’s go with drugs. I have a drug problem. I want help. Give me help. Agree to it, get an ISP and an individualized service plan is written up, it’s all geared towards your general parenting and drugs.
And then three months in there’s a relationship issue where you’re the victim of domestic violence, or there’s domestic violence that happened somewhere around you. Based on your drug counseling, it’s determined you have mental health issues.
These all change the situation for DHS because these are new conditions for them that need to be corrected, but they can’t just make you do them if the court’s already ordered a plan for you. So what they’ll do is they’ll come to the state, to the DA’s office, and say, “We would like you to file a post-adjudication petition.”
That means that this is another document alleging the children are deprived, or child is deprived, alleging things you’ve done wrong in addition to the original. And it runs pretty much the same route as a regular petition.
But what does this mean for you as the parent? Well, the first thing is you’re going to get a chance to have another non-jury trial. You can fight this if you want, or you can agree to it. Same options you had the first time. It also is going to have timing implications for your case. It could potentially leak in your case for a long time. It could give you time to complete things.
There’s a whole strategy behind what you should do on a post-adjudication petition as with the original petition. But the strategy of do we stipulate? Do we agree to it? Do we fight it? These are all things you need to talk to an attorney about because every situation is different and every case is a little bit different.
So if you find yourself in this situation, if they are alleging, you have other things that need to be done after you’ve already been working your plan, then give us a call. We can help. Give us a call and we will have an Oklahoma CPS attorney reach you