Amy gets to know Rob, Lauren's very attractive sensei, better when he brings Lauren home from class after Amy has forgotten to pick her up; Maxine finds some powerful allies in her quest to open a facility devoted to helping victims of child abuse; Amy enlists other judges to volunteer their free time to finalize long-delayed adoptions; Donna becomes depressed when Oscar reveals that he is guilty of his mother's murder; Amy is asked to decide whether an exorcism is in the best interests of a young girl; Jared refuses to let Maxine push him away; Amy reluctantly hires Rob's niece as Lauren's new babysitter.

Evie walks back into Ned's life just as Peter and Gillian are set to adopt him; Maxine deals with a young girl who wants to be adopted before her 18th birthday, and a 12-year-old boy who refuses to be adopted because he believes his birth mother will come back one day.

Amy finds herself in the middle of a love triangle when she considers giving Tom Gillette a second chance while she continues to date Rob; Maxine investigates the case of a boy from a seemingly perfect family who is going deaf; Amy tries to adopt a dog.

Representing the governor, Stuart Collins offers Amy a chance to apply for an appellate court appointment if she'll rule against two women who both want to be named as the mother on their baby's birth certificate; Maxine's friend Vivian gets to see social work in action when her girls-day-out with Maxine gets derailed by a struggling and overworked farmer who believes that his kids should be at home working on the family dairy farm rather than at school; a mourning Gillian finds solace from an online support group when Peter offers her none; Vincent becomes concerned about his finances when he learns that Carole has quite a nest egg; Amy apologizes to Rob, and they reconcile.

Amy must decide whether to terminate the parental rights of a couple convicted of child abuse; Maxine's disrespect rubs a building inspector the wrong way, endangering the scheduled opening for Sanctuary House and thus the federal funds needed for its operation; Amy grapples with her jealousy over Lauren's attachment to Katie; Donna decides to divorce Oscar; Bruce and his sister Winnie quarrel over where their mother should live.

Jonathan Ashworth joins the Sanctuary House team and manages to ruffle everyone's feathers; Amy tries unsuccessfully to displace some doubts about her relationship with Rob onto Maxine, but is finally forced to confront reality; Bruce quarrels with Winnie over their mother's move; Maxine is displeased at the methods Jonathan uses to engineer the arrest and conviction of the Roseland pedophile; Amy hears the case of a boy with gender identity disorder whose parents are charged with educational neglect for keeping him out of school after he's harassed by his classmates.