DRUGS

Substance Abuse Is A Leading Cause For Parents To Lose Their Children. Some
Say Addicts Aren't Given Enough Time To Clean Up Their Act.

Tracy Deering wonders whether the people who took her children know what it
feels like to come home one day and find one's offspring missing. Or to make
progress in kicking a drug addiction, only to be told it wasn't enough.

Or to watch one's children's reluctant faces as another woman becomes their
mother.

"To this day, I'm still trying to figure out what I did that was so bad that
they had to take my kids away," the 42-year-old Des Moines woman said. "I'm
not behind bars, but I feel like I'm doing life for being a drug addict."

For five years, Deering, a single mother of two, tried to free herself of a
crack cocaine addiction, relapsing several times while her children waited
in foster care. Eventually, a Polk County judge terminated her parental
rights when her son was 16 and her daughter was 14.

In Iowa, substance abuse is the leading reason parents lose their children,
judges and prosecutors say. While more than 42,000 Iowans seek treatment
annually, many fail to remain clean their first or even second time in the
recovery process, experts say.

Like Deering, addicts accused of neglecting or abusing their children are
presumed guilty until they can prove they can be stable parents.

For most, that means repeatedly testing negative for drugs, undergoing
counseling, holding on to a job and finding a stable place to live. State
and federal laws give parents as little as six months to a year to reach
those goals - and for good reason, state officials say.

"Courts have said kids have a right to a stable, reliable set of parents,
and that they can't wait," said Mary Nelson, an administrator for the Iowa
Department of Human Services.

Increasingly, however, state officials question whether parents are being
given enough time to prove they can stay clean.

In a recent Department of Human Services survey, many judges expressed
concerns that even parents who were succeeding in drug treatment were losing
their children because of the strict legal deadlines.

Users of methamphetamine, a highly addictive substance that has supplanted
crack as the state's hard drug of choice, require significantly longer
treatment than those who use other substances. At the same time, drug
treatment centers across the state have waiting lists of six weeks to three
months, preventing some parents from getting access in time.

"Our concern for the past couple of years had been with that clock ticking,
and how that works with agencies where mothers can't get in," said Janet
Zwick, a director at the state health department.

Like other parents, Deering believes state and federal laws presume children
are always better off when children are taken from a parent with a
drug-abuse problem. That's a fallacy, she said.

In 1992, her 9- and 11-year-old children called police after she left them
alone for two hours while buying drugs. Although she successfully completed
drug-treatment programs, she relapsed several times over a period of years.

Deering said she didn't break entirely free of crack until two years ago.
Today, her 21-year-old son is in prison and her 19-year-old daughter just
had a baby. Both, she said, are filled with anger and hurt - at her and at
the child-welfare system.

"I was wrong for doing drugs, I know," she said. "But I don't think my
children suffered more at home with me than they did after they were taken
away."

Increasingly, national advocates for families have challenged the premise
that parents should suffer such severe consequences.

"In some cases, the relationship with a substance-abusing parent may be
worth saving," said Dorothy E. Roberts, a law professor at Northwestern
University.