Opinion
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Appeal from an order of the Superior Court of Orange County, Ronald P. Kreber, Judge, Super. Ct. No. DL023295.
Charles R. Khoury, Jr., under appointment by the Court of Appeal, for Defendant and Appellant.
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Gary W. Schons, Assistant Attorney General, Peter Quon, Jr., and Karl T. Terp, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
OPINION
RYLAARSDAM, ACTING P. J.
Andrea G., a minor, appeals from an order declaring her a ward of the court. She contends the trial court abused its discretion because it did not consider evidence she would lose the services she was receiving as a dependent once declared a ward of the court. We disagree and affirm the order.
FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
In November 2005, the minor was found with a knife in her backpack while on school grounds. The minor claimed a male student had asked her to hold the knife for him because he had been called to the office. She acknowledged having a knife on campus was wrong and was released to her foster mother. A wardship petition was filed under Welfare and Institutions Code section 602, charging the minor with the misdemeanor offense of being in possession of a weapon on school grounds.
A subsequent petition charged the minor with vandalism causing damage over $400. The minor had been caught “keying” a teacher’s car at a friend’s request, causing $701 in damage.
The minor admitted the allegations of both petitions, and the court agreed to defer entry of judgment (DEJ) as long as she complied with the terms of probation. But three months later, the minor ran away from her foster placement, failed to report to the probation department, and was truant from school for the last half of the month. She was arrested for driving without a license and giving false information to a police officer, and was thereafter released to the custody of the probation department. The minor told the probation officer that she had run away to Long Beach with a friend, lived with a 21-year-old man whom she had met while a runaway, smoked methamphetamine and rock cocaine daily during the two and a half weeks she was gone, and associated with drug dealers every day.
A dispositional hearing was held in which the minor, her foster mother, her probation officer, and her social worker testified. The minor explained she had run away because she had gotten into a fight with a girl at school. She used drugs during the time she was gone but has not since she came back. She did not want to become a drug addict like her mother. The idea of custody scared her because she did not want to be separated from her younger sister, who lived with her in the same foster home.
The foster mother saw improvement in the minor’s behavior. She wanted to give the minor a chance for a normal life and not punish her for running away because “she has suffered her whole life.”
The probation officer recommended she be declared a ward of the court and placed in a long-term drug treatment program because although the minor passed her drug tests, she had absconded despite knowing the terms and conditions of probation on the DEJ program. He believed the minor had been testing clean for drugs only because she was on house arrest and closely monitored. It was his understanding that if the minor became a ward of the court, she would lose her status as a dependent. He did not know whether she would be able to stay with the same foster mother.
A social worker who had worked with the minor for about eight months testified she was doing well in her foster home with the services being provided and that there was a big difference in her attitude and behavior. As a result, the social worker opined the minor would be better off as a dependent and remaining on DEJ rather than being deemed a ward of the court. In the social worker’s opinion, placing the minor in an eight-month in-custody drug treatment program was excessive because she did not believe the minor was addicted to drugs.
The social worker did not believe the services the minor was receiving would transfer over. Several programs in particular were helping the minor but the social worker did not know whether the probation department used the same or similar programs. And if the minor were made a ward of the court, it was her belief the minor would be removed from her current foster placement with her sister because dependents and wards of the court could not be mixed together in the same home.
Counsel for both sides contended the minor should remain a dependent. After considering their argument, the testimony, and the probation officer’s report, the court declared the minor a ward of the court. The court was concerned the minor’s criminal activity was escalating and that she had violated her probation despite knowing the consequences. It did not, however, remove her from her foster home or send her to the long-term drug treatment program and instead ordered the probation department to ensure she continued seeing the same psychologist, continued drug counseling with the same counselor, and remained in the same foster home with her sister. The court indicated it would hold a hearing if social services removed the minor or her sister from the home solely because the minor had been placed on probation as a ward of the court, stating, “[T]he last time I checked, the court should make the orders, and social services agency should carry them out or seek some remedy for abuse of progress by the court. It doesn’t work the other way around.” The court further stated that if the probation department did not have a contract with the psychiatrist the minor was seeing, it should make one for her.
DISCUSSION
The minor contends the court abused its discretion in declaring her a ward of the court because it did not consider evidence she “would lose all the services being provided to her as a . . . dependent if she was declared a ward of the court . . . .” She claims that by ordering social services to keep her with the same psychologist and with her sister in the same foster home, the court ignored testimony that this was impossible.
But the social worker, on whose testimony the minor apparently relies, never said that. She merely testified regarding what she believed would normally occur. The court’s comments demonstrate it considered the testimony and fashioned a remedy with it in mind. Neither social services nor the probation department indicated they would be unable to comply with the court’s orders. The fact the court disagreed with the attorneys both for the state and the minor does not mean it ignored their recommendation. And because no authority has been cited showing the court acted outside its authority in issuing its order, any such contention is waived. (Landry v. Berryessa Union School Dist. (1995) 39 Cal.App.4th 691, 699-700.)
DISPOSITION
The order is affirmed.
WE CONCUR: FYBEL, J., IKOLA, J.