Tajanay Bailey Court Hearing Recording Released

According to today’s Indianapolis Star, Marion County Juvenile Court officials released the recording of the last hearing in the Tajanay Bailey case.  A complete overview of the recording is provided by the Star.  However, of most importance is this part;

[Magistrate Scott] Stowers’ questions focused mostly on the process of the case. At the end, he approved the DCS plan to initiate unsupervised visits with approval from the counselor and the advocate.

Read that closely… “he approved the DCS plan to initiate unsupervised visits with the approval from the counselor and the advocate.”  In the Blogmeister’s experience, it is not unusual for a Judge, or Magistrate in this case, to approve certain things, pending approval of counselors and advocates.  The reason for this is these people often know the case the best, have a great deal of contact with the family, and, in the counselor’s case, have more training and expertise on family issues than anyone else involved.  So, no problem there (except, again in my experience, DCS hates this because they feel their paying for the case, so they should get to say).  However, his order was to initiate unsupervised visits pending approval, not initiate reunification. 

At the core of this case, and yet to be determined, if ever, is who made the decision to go beyond the Court’s mandate and reunify this family.  The Blogmeister’s guess…someone at DCS.  Why you ask?  They had the most to gain by reunifying the family.  They would save foster-care and treatment money and it would fit with their internal provisions to reunify the family within eighteen months.  It is also interesting the advocate and the counselor, remember the two people who the Judge pended his order for their approval, were seeking court intervention to get her back into foster care.  That hearing was scheduled for the day she died.

Now maybe DCS didn’t take it upon themselves to reunify this family.  Maybe it was a “team” decision, maybe aliens came and did it.  The fact is we don’t know.  Until we know who made this decision, can we expect any real changes at DCS?  Further, doesn’t the court now have standing to, on it’s own motion, conduct a hearing to find out how this family was reunified despite it’s own order to the contrary.  I’m no lawyer, but that sounds a lot like contempt of court to me.