In re Angela

In this appeal we decide that, before a judge may extend up to six months a dispositional order with an out-of-*56home placement arising from an adjudication that a child is in need of services, G. L. c. 119, § 39G, third par., requires the judge to hold an evidentiary hearing and find by a preponderance of the evidence that the purposes of the dispositional order have not been accomplished and that an extension of the order would be reasonably likely to further those purposes.1

These proceedings began on November 20, 2002, when a school official from the town of Mashpee filed a petition in the…