CHILDREN OF DRUG ADDICTION FACE RISKS BEYOND DRUGS

Last fiscal year, 621 Alabama children ended up in foster care
because of substance abuse by parents, according to the state
Department of Human Resources.

In about the same period, the Lovelady Center, a halfway house and
addiction treatment center in eastern Birmingham, helped mothers get
about 100 of their children out of foster care. Most of the women had
lost custody of the children because of drug addiction.

Reuniting children with mothers is a challenge, said Tracy Mullican,
director of development for the Lovelady Center. "Look at the trauma
these children have been through."

That's why Lovelady Center established a day care center for younger
children and a youth group for older children, she said. There are
plans to start a Head Start program, too.

Felicity Blunt, a residential child therapist at Olivia's House in
East Lake, works with children whose mothers are being treated for
addictions at that treatment center. These children often suffer from
attachment disorders - insecurity caused by being moved around too
much among caregivers.

Olivia's House provides residential treatment services for women and
their children who are caught up in the whirlwind of addiction. "It
affects the family as a whole," Blunt said.

She said children often feel responsible for a family breaking up.
Financed by grants, she works with the children to make them feel
needed and accepted.

"They take a bulk of the blame for their mom's addiction," she said.
"I think people are just now starting to take a look at how if
affects the children."

Separated at Birth:

Melissa Bruce, a graduate of the addiction treatment program at the
Lovelady Center, knows what it's like to lose a child because of
drugs. She was hooked on crack, and two years ago her third child, a
daughter, was born with cocaine in her system.

"I was real bad with my addiction when I was pregnant with her," said
Bruce, now a caseworker at the center.

As required by law, the hospital notified the state Department of
Human Resources, and the infant was put in foster care.

Barry Spear, a spokesman for DHR, said in cases such as this social
workers attempt to place the child in the custody of a relative, but
if that's not possible, the child is put in foster care.

"Family unification is our goal, but it can't always be accomplished," he said.

Bruce said she has been drug-free for two years, and her parents went
to court to help her regain custody of her baby. The girl is now 2
and appears to be doing fine.

Prenatal exposure to drugs isn't that unusual. Some national studies
estimate it happens with 10 percent of children; a large study in
Alabama during the 1990s showed that more than 8 percent of pregnant
women tested positive for illicit drugs.

Over the years there have been panicky reports about crack babies,
but studies are beginning to show that children born with cocaine in
their systems aren't doomed to a life of learning disabilities and
social dysfunction.

Michael Lewis, a professor pediatrics and psychiatry at the Robert
Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., is leading a
long-term study of children whose mothers were using cocaine while
pregnant. He said people should keep the problem in perspective.

"Fetal drug exposure does have an effect, but it's relatively small,"
he said. If people are really worried about a child's welfare, he
said, they should consider the child's living conditions and access
to health care.

"If you had a pie and wanted to slice up the effects, I would say
environment is 80 percent, medical risks 15 percent and drug exposure
probably 5 percent," Lewis said.

His studies have shown that mothers of drug-exposed children are
likely to be poor, undereducated and single, have other children and
live in inadequate homes in bad neighborhoods. Taken together, those
factors have the largest impact on a child's welfare and development,
Lewis said.

Next in importance is good health care for the mother and child,
Lewis said. Without that, prenatal care is lacking, and conditions
such as diabetes or heart disease can go untreated.

Lewis said children exposed to drugs in the womb do show some
long-term signs of their experience, but these often are fairly
subtle conditions, given the wide range of behaviors exhibited by
youngsters. In general, he has found drug-exposed children have
difficulty regulating their emotions and controlling inhibitions.

These usually are not debilitating problems, and can be overcome with
early intervention and education; unfortunately, money is seldom
available to address these needs, he said.

Returning to School:

Bruce is now a single mom with three children. One of her children
was born with a severe birth defect, but that child was not exposed
to drugs in the womb, Bruce said.

So Bruce is going back to school hoping to someday get a good job to
support her family.

"It's a hard struggle being a single mother," she said. "I'm hoping
and praying with everything I have that now that I'm clean I can stay
clean and be a part of my kids' lives as their mother."