In the Interest of K.S., Minor Child

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 25-0839 Filed August 6, 2025

IN THE INTEREST OF K.S., Minor Child,

K.S.-M., Mother, Appellant. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Johnson County, Joan M. Black,

Judge.

A mother appeals the juvenile court’s combined adjudicatory and

dispositional order. AFFIRMED.

Joseph C. Pavelich, Iowa City, for appellant mother.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Mackenzie Moran, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee State.

Sara Strain Linder, Linn County Advocate, Cedar Rapids, attorney and

guardian ad litem for minor child.

Considered without oral argument by Greer, P.J., and Schumacher and

Badding, JJ.  2

BADDING, Judge.

A mother appeals the juvenile court’s combined adjudicatory and

dispositional order finding her one-year-old child in need of the court’s assistance

under Iowa Code section 232.96A(3) and (14) (2025).1 She challenges the child’s

adjudication and continued removal from her custody. We affirm upon our de novo

review of the record.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings

The mother has a long history with the Iowa Department of Health and

Human Services due to her struggles with domestic violence, mental health, and

substance use. After a series of child protective assessments that started in 2011,

the mother eventually lost custody of her three oldest children. One child was

placed in his father’s custody, and the mother’s parental rights to the other two

children were terminated in 2019. The mother’s youngest child—and the subject

of this appeal—was born in January 2024. By the end of December, the

department had received a report that the mother was using methamphetamine

while caring for the child and that she threatened the child’s father with a knife in

the child’s presence.

A child protective worker from the department, in the company of law

enforcement, made an unannounced visit to the mother’s home to investigate the

report. The mother answered the door but refused to talk to the worker, who was

able to briefly see the child. Law enforcement told the worker that the residence

was a known drug house. After that short encounter, the mother avoided meeting

1 The child’s father stipulated to the adjudication and does not appeal.  3

with the worker in person, although she responded to his calls and text messages.

She admitted using methamphetamine once during her pregnancy with the child

and again in October but denied any use in December. Two days into the

department’s investigation, the mother took the child to Florida and did not return

with him until mid-January 2025. Meanwhile, the State petitioned to have the child

found in need of the court’s assistance and removed from his parents’ custody.

The juvenile court entered a temporary removal order, citing the mother’s lack of

cooperation with the department and her methamphetamine use.

About three weeks later, the mother and child appeared at the removal

hearing. The juvenile court suspected “the mother was under the influence of an

illegal substance,” noting that she was argumentative and twitching. While the

mother met with her attorney outside the courtroom, the court ordered the relative

placement to leave with the child. The child stayed in two different relative

placements until the department determined “the emotional volatility of the case

participants and discord between families” necessitated “a more neutral

placement” with a foster family.

The mother missed the adjudicatory hearing at the end of February. So the

juvenile court set a combined adjudicatory and dispositional hearing for April. By

that hearing, the mother was participating in some services—including visits with

the child, which went well. She had completed a substance use evaluation and

was scheduled to start treatment. She had also submitted to a drug test for the

department—which was negative for all substances—although she missed four

drug tests before that. The mother testified that she planned to take a hair test the

day after the hearing. And she had a mental health evaluation scheduled to  4

address her past diagnoses, which included borderline personality disorder,

anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. But at the continued

hearing two weeks later, the mother had still not taken the hair test. She had,

however, started substance use treatment and obtained the mental health

evaluation.

During her testimony at the hearings, the mother maintained that she had

last used methamphetamine in October 2024 when the child was with the maternal

grandmother. But the child protective worker testified that the grandmother denied

watching the child then. And the child’s father testified that he and the mother

used methamphetamine together on Christmas Eve when they were at his father’s

house with the child. He also testified that in February, when he was returning

some of the mother’s things to her, she “sucker punched” him in the face.

The juvenile court found that the mother “was difficult to follow” at the

hearing, “as she would go on tangents and not directly respond to questions.” She

was also “argumentative and challenging to manage.” With those observations,

the court determined “the mother has been using methamphetamine while caring”

for the child. The court accordingly adjudicated the child in need of the court’s

assistance under Iowa Code section 232.96A(3) and (14) and found that continued

removal was necessary to ensure his safety. The mother appeals.

II. Standard of Review

We review child-in-need-of-assistance proceedings de novo. In re J.S., 846

N.W.2d 36, 40 (Iowa 2014). In reviewing the proceedings, we give weight to the

juvenile court’s findings of fact, but we are not bound by them. Id. “Our primary

concern is the [child’s] best interests.” Id.  5

III. Analysis

The mother challenges both grounds for the child’s adjudication, which the

State must prove by clear and convincing evidence. See Iowa Code § 232.96(2).

Because adjudication may affect later proceedings, we will address each ground.

See J.S., 846 N.W.2d at 41.

Iowa Code section 232.96A(3)(b) requires proof that the child “has suffered

or is imminently likely to suffer harmful effects as a result of . . . [t]he failure of the

child’s parent . . . to exercise a reasonable degree of care in supervising the child.”

And section 232.96A(14) requires proof that the child’s parent suffers from drug

use “that results in the child not receiving adequate care or being imminently likely

not to receive adequate care.” The mother argues the State failed to prove the

child was imminently likely to either suffer harmful effects or receive inadequate

care because, while she may have used methamphetamine in the past, there was

no evidence of current use.

The phrase “imminently likely” is interpreted liberally and does not require

harm “to be on the verge of happening before adjudicating a child as one in need

of assistance.” J.S., 846 N.W.2d at 43. We also interpret “harmful effects” broadly

to encompass harm to the child’s “physical, mental, or social well-being.” Id. at

41–42. And “adequate care” for a child “means meeting the child’s essential

needs,” one of which is “a safe home.” In re H.W., 961 N.W.2d 138, 144 (Iowa Ct.

App. 2021). Under these definitions, we conclude that sufficient evidence

supported the child’s adjudication under both grounds.

The mother admitted that she used methamphetamine in October 2024, and

the father testified that he used methamphetamine with the mother on Christmas  6

Eve. The mother avoided meeting with the child protective worker in person after

the department opened its investigation into her reported use, going so far as to

leave the state with the child. When she returned to Iowa, the mother continued

to avoid drug testing, providing just one negative urine test for the department at

the beginning of April.2 “We presume these missed drug tests would have resulted

in positive tests.” In re C.F., No. 20-1067, 2020 WL 6482073, at (Iowa Ct. App.

Nov. 4, 2020) (citation omitted) (collecting cases). The child protective worker,

juvenile court, and guardian ad litem also observed behavioral indicators of

substance use, including erratic communication and twitching.

As our supreme court has recognized, a “parent’s methamphetamine

addiction by itself can result in ‘harmful effects’ to the child, thereby justifying state

intervention to protect the child” under section 232.96A(3)(b). J.S., 846 N.W.2d at

37. And although the child protective worker testified the child was “very well taken

care of” when he was removed, the mother’s long history of drug use and recent

circumvention of drug testing—along with the outward signs of drug use—leads us

to conclude the child was at imminent risk of receiving inadequate care, as required

by section 232.96A(14). See In re O.D., No. 23-0013, 2023 WL 3089878, at

(Iowa Ct. App. Apr. 26, 2023) (finding an imminent risk under near-identical

circumstances); In re J.P., No. 19-1633, 2020 WL 110425, at (Iowa Ct. App.

Jan. 9, 2020) (“A parent’s methamphetamine use, in itself, creates a dangerous

2 The mother had two negative urine tests for her substance-use provider. But the child protective worker testified that “urinalysis testing for methamphetamine is not necessarily a great indicator, because methamphetamine gets out of the body generally quickly.”  7

environment for children.”). We accordingly affirm the child’s adjudication under

both grounds.

As for the child’s continued removal after the dispositional hearing, the

mother contends that removal is not the least restrictive disposition and asks that

we return the child to her custody. See Iowa Code § 232.99(4) (requiring the

juvenile court to “make the least restrictive disposition appropriate considering all

the circumstances of the case”); id. § 232.102(4)(a) (directing that “[w]henever

possible the court should permit the child to remain at home with the child’s

parent”). We agree with the State that “the juvenile court’s disposition of continued

removal was the least restrictive appropriate disposition as the mother has only

just begun to engage in services and provide negative drug tests to demonstrate

her abstention from substance use.” The mother’s initial obstinance with the

department “prevented the juvenile court from monitoring if the necessary progress

had been made to return the child” to her custody. In re O.P., No. 23-0464, 2023

WL 3612387, at (Iowa Ct. App. May 24, 2023). “Without ‘insight or recognition

of changes that need to be made,’” we agree with the juvenile court that the child

was still at risk of adjudicatory harm if returned to the mother’s custody. In re Q.C.,

No. 24-1469, 2024 WL 5153933, at (Iowa Ct. App. Dec. 18, 2024) (citation

omitted).

While we are sympathetic to the mother’s desire to have her son back in

her custody, and we are encouraged by her recent progress and positive visits, we

must put the child’s “best interest at the forefront.” In re A.C., No. 24-1689, 2025

WL 52844, at (Iowa Ct. App. Jan. 9, 2025). To ensure a safe environment for  8

the child, we conclude that “additional time to show meaningful sobriety is

necessary.” Id.

AFFIRMED.