In re Baby Boy L

In In re Baby Boy L. (1994) 24 Cal.App.4th 596, at a combined jurisdiction and disposition hearing, the juvenile court found that the whereabouts of Baby Boy L.'s parents were unknown, and reunification services therefore not required. The mother remained largely uninvolved in the dependency proceeding, seeking reunification services only at the date originally set for the section 366.26 hearing. The court ordered the mother to participate in drug and alcohol abuse counseling and submit to drug testing. At the continued section 366.26 hearing, the mother made an oral section 388 motion, submitting a letter from a counselor attesting that she had enrolled in a drug counseling program and seemed sincere in her desire to become drug-free. Mother's attorney represented that all of her drug tests had been negative, although no evidence of such was provided to the department of child services or the court. The court declined to hold a section 388 hearing and freed the child for adoption. (Id. at pp. 601-602.) The Court of Appeal affirmed. (In re Baby Boy L., supra, 24 Cal.App.4th at p. 613.) As pertinent here, the court explained, "This is not a case in which the record suggests that the mother's circumstances had changed for the better, and yet the court refused to receive evidence of the improvement. . . ." Instead, it observed, "At the eleventh hour and the fifty-ninth minute, she offered a bare scintilla of proof that she was beginning to rehabilitate." (Id. at p. 610.)