Judge orders drug testing, halts in-person visits after mother reports relapse in Hernandez child-welfare case

At a Zoom status hearing in the Hernandez child-welfare case, the judge found a continuing danger to return the children home, ordered the mother to submit hair and urine drug tests and suspended her in-person visits until she tests negative, the court record shows.

The order came after the children’s mother, Wendy Martinez, reported by text that she had relapsed and was trying to get into inpatient rehabilitation. “I relapsed again. I’m really trying to get into rehab, but it’s been hard. I don’t have a way to go see the kids,” Martinez wrote, according to the caseworker’s report read into the record.

The action matters because the court placed the children with relatives and ordered the Department of Family and Protective Services to continue as temporary managing conservator and to use reasonable efforts to…