Adoption of Rico

Rico is currently twelve years old and has been in the custody of the Department of Social Services2 (department or DCF) since he was three years old. In 2006, after thirteen days *750of trial in a consolidated care and protection proceeding involving Rico, his four siblings, the children’s biological mother, and two fathers, a judge in the Juvenile Court determined pursuant to G. L. c. 119, § 26, and G. L. c. 210, § 3, that the parental rights of Rico’s biological mother and father should be terminated,3 and she dispensed with parental consent to the adoption of three of the children, including…