Legal Question in Family Law in Ohio
Juvenilee court diversion programs
We have recently gone to juvenille court to deal with a charge of
unruly/delinquent child on our 8 year old for minor infractions of disturbing others during class and consistently talking out of turn. We pleaded guilty to avoid a trial and the outcome was the judge ordered us to attend the county's diversion program which entails attending counseling and completing the
diversion program. For the past 6 months as the case was being settled and we were waiting for court dates, and before we attended the diversion program, we have had our son in counseling with an excellent child psychologist. The psychologist found nothing wrong with our son and wrote a letter stating so which was presented to the judge at the last pretrial conference. She ordered diversion anyway. When we went to our first diversion meeting, the program administrator ordered counseling. When we stated that we had already completed 12 visits and our son received a clean bill of health, she stated she would have to confer with the judge. Our question is...can the court mandate a specific counselor for us to see if we already have an established one? If not, can they force us to continue counseling when it is clearly not necessary?
1 Answer from Attorneys
Re: Juvenilee court diversion
My initial reaction is I'm a bit puzzled how talking out of turn led to a delinquency charge. My gut tells me it's a violation of due process for a court to impose that kind of open ended burden on third parties. But I know giving courts and even schools police powers over parents is becoming very popular. By the way have you heard back from the diversion program yet? If the judge concurred with you, this might solve the current problem.
Also, if the school is insisting that your child has some kind of problem, you can force them to do an evaluation to determine if he needs intervention from them. Federal law mandates that school districts evaluate and provide services children who may have disabilities (this can range from attentional problems all the way to severe disabilities)
The reason I bring it up is that it is very possible that your school is in the habit of using the courts to get out of their obligations toward students and if this has happened over something trivial it could develop into an ongoing headache for you. If you wish contact me, I may able to give you some pointers (I am not currently in private practice so I don't cases, but I can certainly point you in the right direction and even refer you to some people who can advise you about this)
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