SOCIAL WORKERS TO HELP CHILDREN AT SCENE OF DRUG RAIDS

More and more Jackson County drug dealers operate in houses with children,
prompting a new strategy that teams prosecutors and social workers.

A state social worker will start going to such houses with the county's Drug
Abatement Response Team shortly after police secure the scene.

The agreement signed Thursday will get children help as quickly as possible,
Jackson County Prosecutor Bob Beaird said -- for their good and for
society's.

"If you don't somehow affect kids living in that, you're going to have your
next generation of users," Beaird said. "We want to press them that day and
change their lives."

Jeannie Jones, a director with the Division of Family Services, said the new
procedure would get help to children days faster. Police previously reported
the children to Family Services by a hot line, and Family Services had to
investigate and determine whether to intervene, she said.

Now a Family Services worker working from the scene will make sure children
are in safe care, she said, assess the situation and get family members into
drug treatment or other programs. The police raids serve social workers by
finding families that need help, Jones said.

Many adult drug addicts faced with the possibility of losing their children
to state custody will be forced to change, Jones said.

The DART team arrives at such raids after police and often boards up the
house. It handled over 600 properties last year, many of which will be
seized by the state.

Kathy Finnell, an assistant prosecutor who heads efforts against
neighborhood crime, said drug houses are no longer in mostly run-down, often
vacant houses.

"There used to be an unwritten rule that you never brought your work home,"
she said. "No longer."

Finnell said children living with meth makers are at risk from dangerous lab
chemicals.

She noted that teams of people in full environmental suits clean up meth
houses "where kids are walking around barefoot."