## Facts

- A baby girl (S.D.V‑H.) was born in August 1992 with serious medical conditions and was adjudicated dependent.
- Florida’s Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) obtained custody and placed the child in temporary foster care with S.H. and K.H. shortly after birth.
- The foster parents signed an HRS foster care agreement stating the placement was temporary, the child remained under HRS control, the child could be removed by HRS, and the foster parents would not seek legal custody or guardianship.
- The child’s biological aunt and uncle, C.S. and J.S. (living in New York), confirmed the child’s birth in April 1993 and promptly began steps to qualify as adoptive parents.
- HRS pursued termination of the natural mother’s parental rights; after termination, HRS decided to place the child for adoption with C.S. and J.S., consistent with agency policy favoring placement with fit relatives.
- When HRS attempted to remove the child from the foster home, the foster parents refused to release the child and obtained a temporary injunction preventing removal; the injunction remained in place until trial in 1995.
- Both the foster parents and the relatives filed competing adoption petitions.
- The trial court found HRS acted unreasonably in withholding consent to the foster parents’ adoption, waived HRS’s consent, and entered a final judgment of adoption for the foster parents based largely on the child’s three-year placement and bonding.

## Issues

1. Whether a trial court may interfere with HRS’s adoptive placement decision for a dependent child in HRS custody when the agency’s selection of biological relatives is appropriate, policy-consistent, and timely.
2. Whether the trial court properly waived HRS’s statutory consent to adoption to award adoption to foster parents over the agency’s selected relatives.

## Decision

- The appellate court reversed the final judgment of adoption granted to the foster parents.
- It held the trial court lacked authority to override HRS’s selection of the biological relatives as prospective adoptive parents where the agency’s selection was appropriate, consistent with its policies, and made expeditiously.
- Because HRS’s refusal to consent to the foster parents’ adoption was not unreasonable or arbitrary under the circumstances, the waiver of HRS consent was improper.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with recognizing HRS’s placement decision.

## Legal Principles

- When a dependent child is committed to the custody of the state child-welfare agency, the agency has primary responsibility to select an adoptive placement; judicial review is limited.
- A court may waive the custodial agency’s consent to adoption only under narrow circumstances, such as unreasonable or arbitrary agency action; disagreement with the agency’s placement choice is insufficient.
- Foster parents’ contractual commitments that placement is temporary and subject to agency control limit their ability to seek adoption contrary to the agency’s placement decision.
- Bonding and passage of time during foster placement do not justify judicial substitution of judgment where the delay and resulting bond were materially affected by an injunction preventing the agency from implementing its placement decision.

## Conclusion

The appellate court reversed an adoption awarded to foster parents, holding that HRS’s reasonable, policy-consistent decision to place the dependent child with qualified biological relatives could not be displaced by a trial court’s waiver of agency consent based chiefly on bonding that developed during an extended, court-restrained foster placement.


C.S. & J.S. v. S.H. & K.H., 671 So. 2d 260 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 4th Dist. 1996)