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Finding A Reasonable Way To Enforce The Reasonable Efforts Requirement In Child Protection Cases, Jeanne M. Kaiser

Jeanne M. Kaiser

Abstract: Under federal law, state child protection agencies are required to exert “reasonable efforts” to reunite abused and neglected children with their parents before seeking to terminate parental rights and free the children for adoption. The scope of this requirement is undefined in federal statutes and in the statutory law of many states. As a result, it has fallen to appellate courts to determine the degree of effort a state agency must exert before the relationship between a parent and a child is severed. This has proven no easy task. By the time a parental termination case has reached an …