ADDICTED PARENTS GET HELP TO STAY CLEAN

`Drug Court' Offers Treatment, Counseling

Altamese McIntosh cradled her baby girl in a crowded courtroom Friday
as Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen thundered for emphasis, "How
many crack babies did you have?"

"Five," McIntosh replied softly.

Last year, because of that astonishing number, the state wanted to
strip McIntosh of parental rights over all seven of her children. But
that was before the judge ordered McIntosh and her family into a
groundbreaking program now called Dependency Drug Court.

The program, one of about 10 nationwide, offers addicted parents
intensive drug treatment, special counseling, twice-a-week urinalysis
and weekly meetings with the judge. The goal is to go straight and
regain custody of the children. The threat is losing the kids
permanently.

The idea is desperately needed in Miami-Dade, where crack cocaine or
alcohol addictions plague 70 percent of the parents whose children
have been removed from the home for abuse or neglect, Cohen said. She
has already enrolled 34 addicted adults who are parents to more than
90 children.

So far for McIntosh, the program seems to be working. She has been
drug-free for seven months. She's mothering again, after the judge
allowed six of her children to move in with her at The Village, a drug
treatment center. And on Friday, after considerable prodding, Cohen
agreed to let them all move back home.

"But listen to me: You have no room to relapse!" Cohen warned
McIntosh, who faces about another year in the program. At the first
sign of trouble, the tough-talking judge promised, "you will lose all
your children."

Losing your children. In court lingo, it's called TPR, or termination
of parental rights. With family reunification their highest goal,
dependency judges used to take between two and six years to reach that
drastic last step.

In the meantime, thousands of children languished in foster care or
with relatives. Lawsuits and legislation have changed all that, Cohen
said. Now the courts are required to make permanent custody decisions
within 12 to 18 months.

The Dependency Drug Court allows judges to move cases along faster --
and more successfully, Judge Cohen believes -- because it is based on
unique coordination between the courts, treatment providers and
caseworkers for the state Department of Children and Families. If a
parent's urine sample reveals drug use, for instance, everyone
involved in the case knows and can react immediately.

That's a significant change in a system that traditionally offered
little feedback to judges making important decisions about children's
futures. "For the first time, we're all working together," said Cohen,
the driving force behind Miami-Dade's court. "This is a miracle in
this county."

Lawyer Karl Hall Jr., who represented McIntosh on Friday, called the
Dependency Drug Court "a positive, holistic approach" tailored to
address some of the largest problems in the juvenile justice system.

McIntosh's case "is an example of how the court system, through the
front-loaded services of Judge Cohen's drug court and the individual
successes of the parents, can place children back with their families
while still addressing the drug problem," Hall said.

Cohen's lobbying got Miami included in a three-city study of family
drug courts being administered by the George Washington University
Medical Center. Since March, analysts have been collecting data on 30
participants and comparing the information to results in a regular
dependency court -- without a specialized drug component -- in Tampa.

Cohen also got funding for programs that help participants'
children.

"We treat substance abuse as a family issue," Cohen said. "I tell them
if one person is using, the whole family is ill."

Miami's group, like those elsewhere around the nation, is primarily
women, but does include several fathers who have custody of their
children or are partners of addicted women. Because the women have
such a high birth rate, Cohen asks them if they want to have their
fallopian tubes tied for birth control. Most do.

"A lot of these women are very young and have five, six, seven
children," Cohen said. "They'll never get out of this mess if they
keep having children."

On Friday, the day the judge regularly meets with parents, all 12 who
came to court gave "clean" urine. The results aren't always that
perfect. Two women have been dropped from the program for
noncompliance. Their cases will proceed toward termination of parental
rights.

For the most part, though, optimism runs high that more women will leave
the courtroom as Altamese McIntosh did Friday: smiling, drug-free, with her
baby -- and heading home.

"Today the judge took a ray of hope, with caution," said Hall,
McIntosh's lawyer. "Perseverence will continue to be needed on this
case and thousands of others like it that go through this court every
day."