WHEN MOMMY USES DRUGS

Sunny Clark smoked crack-cocaine and drank liquor throughout her pregnancy.

"Actually, when my water was breaking I was sitting there smoking," recalls
the 24-year-old Birmingham mother.

Social workers from the Jefferson County Department of Human Resources
visited Clark in July, immediately after 61/2-pound Juanita was born. They
began piecing together a plan to keep the baby safe.

"Talking about taking my child for six months helped me," said Clark, now a
resident at Aletheia House drug treatment center. There she takes
rehabilitation and job-training classes. Juanita lives with her.

Under a recently changed DHR policy, families such as the Clarks will not
always be treated with such urgency.

The change has alarmed the juvenile court judges who oversee cases
involving children of parents who have abused drugs. Judges say the new
rules lessen the severity of these cases, and open doors for children to
fall through the cracks to not receive the immediate attention crucial for
the safety of babies such as Juanita.

"Children in Alabama will die if this policy is implemented," wrote Shelby
County District Judge Patricia M. Smith in an Oct. 10 letter to state DHR
Commissioner Bill Fuller.

Smith wrote the letter on behalf of anxious juvenile and family court
judges who learned of the new DHR rules at a September statewide judges
meeting.

At issue is DHR's decision to no longer treat infants who test positive for
drugs as "child abuse/neglect" reports, or C/ANs. A C/AN is the standard
for investigating and documenting abuse or neglect. Instead, the
drug-positive newborns will be handled as less serious "prevention" cases.
That means social workers will first determine if the mother's drug use
warrants DHR's continued involvement. Before, such care was practically
automatic. The word "if" especially troubles the judges.

"To us, it's obvious," said Covington County District Judge Frank "Trippy"
McGuire, president of the Alabama Association of Juvenile and Family Court
judges. "If we have to wait for a determination to be made, babies will die
in the meantime."

The judges do not necessarily take infants away from drug-abusing mothers.
But they believe that protective services must immediately be in place so
that a mother in a drug haze won't endanger or abandon her child.

An October draft calls for the changes to kick in Nov. 1.

Fuller said he is paying close attention to the judges' concerns. The new
policy could see further changes, he said.

Some DHR workers are also uncomfortable with the change, said Rosemary
Brigham, a supervisor in the state DHR office of Child Protective Services.

DHR officials insist the policy does not limit social workers. It requires
a home visit within 12 hours of hospital discharge, if there has been no
visit at the hospital. And the policy demands that the cases be handled as
abuse/neglect reports when a social worker determines a mother's drug use
places her child in harm's way.

Reasons For Change

DHR officials give several reasons for the change. They want to find out if
a mother's drug use has affected the baby before assuming there is abuse.
Is the mother addicted, for example, or an infrequent user? Is there other
family support?

"It seems to be a better approach, more family friendly and not so
punitive...To get our information before we make judgments," Brigham said.
"Sometimes separating a child from a family is much more traumatic and
damaging than what may have occurred to the child."

DHR's revised policy also falls in line with newer medical research that
crushes the "crack baby" myth, though the change was not based on new
studies, Brigham said.

In the 1980s, the disparaging label gained popularity. Infants born to
mothers swept up in the crack-cocaine epidemic were thought to be
hopelessly damaged little monsters. Word spread based on preliminary
research that "crack babies" could not learn or show love like other children.

That was "never accurate," said Dr. Claire Coles, a professor at the Emory
University School of Medicine and a leading researcher on the effects of
drugs and alcohol on fetuses.

Often, a combination of alcohol, cigarettes and drugs harmed infants.
Cocaine alone was not to blame. "Alcohol is more widespread and damaging by
orders of magnitude," Coles said.

"It's amazing to me the vigor of this myth," she said. And the ones most
harmed are the stigmatized babies. "It really follows these children
throughout their lives. People don't want to adopt them and that sort of
thing," she said.

None of this is to say that pregnant women should use drugs. But to focus
on the medical myths is to risk missing the real threat to children the
environment of poverty and neglect that a parent's drug use often creates.

"We're not going to leave that child in a harmful situation," said DHR's
Brigham.

Judges Dissatisfied

Jefferson County Family Court Judge Sandra Storm isn't convinced.

Even under the old guidelines, DHR was not doing enough to satisfy some judges.

"We have had some grave concerns about children living in homes where
parents are drug addicted because of some serious injuries that occurred
here when DHR was supposed to be monitoring the families. But it was not a
court case and the courts didn't know about it," Storm said.

In response, Jefferson County authorities recently hammered out their own
safety policy, but the new state rule negates those carefully crafted
plans, she said.

"I think the new policy looks good in theory. It's ivory tower thinking.
But in the real world where we live every day, it ignores safety issues,"
Storm said.

And it caught judges by surprise. "No one was informed about it. No one
knew ahead of time," she said.

For Clark, the new mother in rehab, her daughter was the single motivator
to try and stop using drugs.

But even with a newborn, she spent two months on a waiting list because of
Alabama's chronic shortage of drug treatment for poor people. From the day
of her daughter's birth she begged for help. "I need help now. Help me now,
not tomorrow," she told social workers. DHR arranged for her to stay with
an aunt until a treatment spot opened.

Now, Clark says she wants to watch her daughter grow, see her through
school and tend her when she's sick. "She's a new chance at life," Clark said.