THE FORGOTTEN DRUG TESTS

The Money Shortage Puts Guesswork Into Reuniting Children And Parents.

Here's another story about the human cost of budget cuts. The money to pay
for drug testing of parents whose children are in foster care has run out.
As of March 14, the roughly 430 adults in Polk County who were previously
ordered by the court to be screened for drugs as part of the plan to get
their children back will be tested no more.

According to a memo sent from the Fifth Judicial District of Iowa to the
Department of Human Services, judges and other human-services agencies,
drug testing has put Juvenile Court in the hole more than $87,000 for
fiscal year 2002. That doesn't even include expenses from January, February
or March of this year.

According to Bert Aunan, chief Juvenile Court officer, this is the worst
he's seen in his 30 years working in juvenile services. He attributes the
shortfall to a 46.5 percent increase in child-welfare cases last year. "The
court reviews the cases, and the court orders testing. Because it's
court-ordered, the state pays for it," he said. But there's little money to
be found in budgets, so parents simply won't be drug tested.

What happens now? Many of the kids in foster care are there as a result of
substance abuse by their parents. Generally, parents have to be clean
before they're reunited with their kids. Dale Schmitz of DHS says kids will
be put at greater risk. Without conclusive tests, social workers will have
to try to use other means to assess whether parents are using drugs.
Checking with employers, treatment counselors and observing the parents are
some of the assessment tools social workers will have to fall back on.

That's unreliable, at best.

Schmitz also says the suspension of testing could delay the return of
foster children to their families. "We're less able to assess the risk to
children, and it's less likely we'll get them quickly back home." Even more
troubling are cases where kids have been returned and parents are ordered
to continue submitting to tests. They'll go unchecked.

This is just another example of how Iowa kids end up hurt by the state
revenue shortfall. Parents who use drugs damage their children. It's up to
DHS to help protect these kids. But the public shouldn't expect the
department to do that job adequately when the necessary tools aren't available.