After an evidentiary hearing, the Juvenile Court of Peach County declared J. W. deprived and continued the temporary custody awarded in an earlier order to the Georgia Department of Human Resources by and through the Peach County Department of Family and Children Services “the Department”. The juvenile court concluded that returning the child to the home would be contrary to his welfare and ordered the Department to discontinue its efforts to reunify the child with his parents. The juvenile court based its order on its findings that the child’s mother failed to complete a case plan and did not want to pursue reunification with the child and that the child’s father lacked the mental capacity to care for the child, who has special medical needs. The child’s father appeals, contending the trial court’s factual findings underlying the non-reunification order were not supported by clear and convincing evidence. Finding no error, we affirm. Georgia law defines a deprived child as, inter alia, “a child who . . . is without proper parental care or control, subsistence, education as required by law, or other care or control necessary for the child’s physical, mental, or emotional health or morals.” OCGA § 15-11-2 8 A. That definition focuses upon the needs of the child regardless of parental fault. . . . To authorize even a loss of temporary custody by a child’s parents, on the basis of deprivation, the deprivation must be shown to have resulted from unfitness on the part of the parent, that is, either intentional or unintentional misconduct resulting in the abuse or neglect of the child or by what is tantamount to physical or mental incapability to care for the child. On appeal from a determination that a child is deprived, we review the evidence in the light most favorable to the juvenile court’s judgment to determine whether any rational trier of fact could have found by clear and convincing evidence that the child was deprived. Parental unfitness must also be proved by clear and convincing evidence. This standard of review safeguards the high value society places on the integrity of the family unit and helps eliminate the risk that a factfinder might base his determination on a few isolated instances of unusual conduct or idiosyncratic behavior. Only under compelling circumstances found to exist by clear and convincing proof may a court sever the parent-child custodial relationship. Footnotes and punctuation omitted. In re S. J. , __Ga. App.__ Case No. A04A0836, decided November 23, 2004. A court which adjudicates a child deprived may extend the temporary custody order for an additional 12 months if, after satisfying certain procedural requirements, the court finds that the extension is necessary to accomplish the purposes of the original order. OCGA § 15-11-58 n.
Viewed in the light most favorable to the juvenile court’s factual findings, the record shows the following. The child, J. W., who was nine years old at the time of the appealed order, is permanently disabled by cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair. The child cannot communicate verbally, feed himself, dress himself, or use the toilet by himself. The child suffers from seizures and requires constant care and supervision. The Department removed the child from the home after finding that the parents were very frequently entertaining guests in the home and leaving the child and his siblings without adequate care and supervision. After a hearing on the Department’s original deprivation petition, the juvenile court concluded that the child’s father is not capable of caring for this special needs child. The juvenile court found that the father is mentally handicapped and functions in the lower level of intelligence. The juvenile court based these conclusions on a comprehensive psychological evaluation of the father. The examiner concluded that the father is mildly retarded with a Full Scale IQ of 60; this IQ is lower than 99.6 of the adult population. On a test of his adaptive skills, the father scored lower than 99.9 of the population, with overall adaptive skills “about equivalent to an average early elementary school aged child.” The examiner found it unlikely, even with intensive parent education, that the father “has the capacity to become independently responsible for a child, let alone a child with special needs.” Because of the father’s genuine interest in caring for the child, however, the Department opted at that time not to ask the court to approve a non-reunification plan. Instead, the Department committed to work with the father for a period of six months to see if his parenting skills could be improved sufficiently to receive the child back in the home and to ascertain whether any of the father’s relatives could assist in the child’s care. On December 8, 2003, the juvenile court adjudicated the child deprived and sanctioned the Department’s reunification plan. The father did not appeal the deprivation order.1
