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Dependency Decoded

Stage 14 of 14

How the case ends

Moving forward

However the case ended, it is not the last chapter. What holds afterward is routine, support, and documentation — the same things that mattered during the case.

  1. Stage 1: When DCYF first contacts you
  2. Stage 2: The home visit
  3. Stage 3: Safety plans and voluntary placement
  4. Stage 4: If your child is an Indian child
  5. Stage 5: The Family Team Decision Meeting
  6. Stage 6: The shelter care hearing
  7. Stage 7: Fact-finding and disposition
  8. Stage 8: Your case plan and parenting programs
  9. Stage 9: Review hearings
  10. Stage 10: The permanency planning hearing
  11. Stage 11: Reunification
  12. Stage 12: Guardianship, adoption, and other outcomes
  13. Stage 13: Appeals and other remedies
  14. Stage 14: Moving forward

After reunification

  • Keep the routine steady. Consistency is what children settle into.
  • Finish any services still recommended, even after the case closes.
  • Talk with your child honestly and at their level about what happened.
  • Keep your court orders and records. You may need them years later.
  • Stay connected to the people and programs that helped.

If there is contact again

A new report does not undo what you completed. Stay calm, ask for the concern in writing, contact a lawyer early, and produce the records showing what you finished. Documentation from a closed case is genuinely useful here.

If your child did not come home

Where there is a guardianship or an agreement for post-adoption contact, keep to it exactly as written — reliability is what keeps contact open over years.

Where there is no contact, some parents keep letters or photographs with a trusted relative for a child to receive when they are older. Ask your lawyer what is permitted in your situation.

Continuing to build stability matters. Circumstances change, children grow up, and what is possible later is not fixed by what is possible now.

Looking after yourself

A dependency case is a sustained loss even when it ends well, and the exhaustion afterward is real. Counseling and peer support help. So does having something ahead of you — work, school, a goal that is yours.

Many parents who have been through this end up helping others through it. That is not required of you. It is worth knowing it happens.

The law that applies here

Read the official text yourself.

Each entry begins with our plain-language explanation, followed by the official section caption. Use the link to read the complete, current text on the official Washington government website. The official text controls.

Chapter 13.34 RCW

Juvenile court act — Dependency and termination of parent-child relationship

Plain-language explanation

The main Washington chapter governing dependency cases from the petition through review, permanency, guardianship, and termination. Different sections apply at different stages.

Read the official text

RCW 13.34.090

Rights under chapter proceedings.

Plain-language explanation

Gives parties the right to a lawyer, to present evidence, to be heard, to examine witnesses, and to a decision from an unbiased fact finder based on the hearing evidence. It also addresses appointed counsel.

Read the official text