How a CPS case works in San Diego County

Step 1: The referral and the investigation

Every case starts with a call to the child abuse hotline: a teacher, a doctor, a neighbor, an ex. San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency, Child Welfare Services (CWS) assigns a social worker who has a set number of days to decide whether the report is unfounded, inconclusive, or substantiated. During that window the worker will want to come into your home, interview your children alone, often at school without telling you, and ask you to sign releases for medical and school records.

What you do in these days matters more than most parents realize. You are not required to let a social worker in without a warrant or a real emergency, you are not required to answer questions about the allegations, and you are not required to sign a "safety plan" that moves your child out of the home. Politeness is free; information is not. Call us before the second visit, not after the removal.

Step 2: Removal, and the 48-hour clock

If CWS decides a child can't safely stay home, the worker either gets a removal order from a judge or, in a true emergency, takes the child without one (Welfare & Institutions Code § 306). Either way the county must file a petition under § 300 and the court must hold a detention hearing within 48 hours, not counting weekends and court holidays (§§ 313, 315). If the county misses that deadline, your child must be released.

You'll receive a copy of the petition and the social worker's detention report. Read it carefully; it will be the county's version of your family for the rest of the case, and mistakes in it that go unchallenged tend to become "facts."

Step 3: The detention hearing, your first and best chance

This hearing, at the San Diego Juvenile Court, decides where your child lives while the case is pending. The judge asks one question: has the county shown that returning the child home right now would create a substantial danger? If the answer is no, the child comes home, sometimes with services and conditions. If yes, the child stays detained, usually with a relative if one is available, and the court sets visitation.

Court-appointed attorneys often meet parents minutes before this hearing. We prepare for it: a relative ready to be assessed for placement, proof that the immediate concern has been addressed, and a clear argument for why the child can come home today. What the judge decides here shapes the next twelve months.

Step 4: Jurisdiction, the trial on the petition

Within a few weeks (or longer if the child is home), the court holds the jurisdiction hearing. This is the trial. County counsel must prove the allegations in the petition by a preponderance of the evidence. You have the right to cross-examine the social worker, call witnesses, and present your own evidence. Many petitions are over-pleaded; we push to get allegations dismissed or amended, because the allegations that are sustained control what your case plan requires and what the county can say about you later.

Step 5: Disposition, and the case plan

If the court takes jurisdiction, the disposition hearing decides whether the child is placed at home under supervision or removed, and orders a case plan: parenting classes, counseling, drug testing, domestic-violence programs, whatever matches the sustained allegations. We fight for a plan that is realistic for your work and family life and actually related to the findings, because an impossible plan is a plan you'll be blamed for failing.

Step 6: Reunification and review hearings

If your child was removed, the court reviews the case every six months. Under § 361.5, reunification services generally run six months for a child under three and twelve months for a child three or older, extendable to eighteen. At each review the judge looks at your progress on the case plan and the quality of your visits. This is where cases are won quietly: expanding monitored visits to unmonitored, overnights, and then a return home with a family-maintenance plan.

Step 7: The .26 hearing, and after

If services end without the child returning, the court sets a hearing under § 366.26 to choose a permanent plan: adoption, guardianship, or long-term foster care. Adoption terminates parental rights. Notice of a .26 hearing is the point of no return; there is a short window to file a writ challenging the order that set it, and specific legal exceptions we can argue at the hearing itself. If you get that notice, call the same day.

How long it takes and what it costs

A case that ends at detention or jurisdiction can be over in weeks. A full reunification case in San Diego County commonly runs twelve to eighteen months. Fees depend on how far the case goes; a case resolved at the first hearing costs a fraction of one that goes to a contested .26. We tell you the realistic range at the consultation and structure the case to keep costs proportional to what's at stake, which here is your child.