SEPARATION FROM MOM CAN BE MORE TOXIC THAN COCAINE

I thank the Daily Mail and reporter Vada Mossavat for focusing on the
importance of drug treatment programs that allow mothers and their children
to stay together ("Addicted mothers get help from program," July 17).

Too often, the only response to addicted parents has been to sweep their
children away and into America's chaotic system of foster care. The
assumption is that the mother must be irredeemable, and the children would
have to be better off elsewhere. The research says otherwise.

In a University of Florida study of "crack babies," one group was placed in
foster care, another with birth mothers able to care for them. After six
months, the babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant
development: rolling over, sitting up, reaching out.

Consistently, the children placed with their birth mothers did better. For
the foster children, the separation from their mothers was more toxic than
the cocaine.

It is extremely difficult to take a swing at bad mothers without the blow
landing on their children. If we really believe all the rhetoric about the
needs of the children coming first, we must put those needs before anything
- -- even our anger at their parents.

Programs like the Prestera Center's Renaissance program, featured in
Mossavat's story, are among the very best investments any state can make to
help its most vulnerable children.

Richard Wexler

Alexandria, Va.