In re Interest of Emily C.

SUMMARY: Jurisdiction over a truant juvenile was continued even though she had attended all her classes at the Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center. The court ruled that “the simple fact that [she] ha[d] not been truant… [was] not enough to terminate the court’s jurisdiction, because the situation at YRTC [made] it nearly impossible for her to be truant,” and she had not demonstrated her ability and willingness to “attend school in an unstructured setting.”

Emily C. was adjudicated as a truant after missing 11 days of school between September and November 2005. In April 2006, Emily was committed to the Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center-Geneva (YRTC). At a review hearing, evidence was heard that Emily attended all classes at YRTC and was “making progress on her objectives;” however, the principal at YRTC testified that “it would be ‘pretty difficult’ for Emily to be truant while” at YRTC. DHHS recommended that jurisdiction be terminated since Emily’s truancy issue had been resolved and she would remain under “an Office of Juvenile Services committment.” Instead, the juvenile court continued jurisdiction “after [they] found that she [was] at risk to become truant if released from the Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center-Geneva (YRTC).” DHHS appealed after a Juvenile Review Panel affirmed the juvenile court’s decision.

The Court of Appeals found that terminating jurisdiction was not in Emily’s best interests. Although Emily was not truant while at YRTC, she “ha[d] not yet demonstrated that she [could] and [would] successfully attend school in an unstructured setting,” since YRTC “[made] it nearly impossible for her to be truant. Further, although Emily’s therapy objectives did not “directly align with her past truancy,” the court could not “conclude that her family problems, authority problems, and anger issues being addressed in her therapy [were] unrelated to her past truancy.”

DHHS’s claim that “’the Court [should] not maintain two separate dockets for a juvenile when one of the jurisdictional bases can be managed under the other docket’s services’” required no discussion because it was “essentially asking this court to render an advisory opinion as to how DHHS should internally manage Emily.”