REHAB PARENTS LAMENT LOSS OF KIDS

R ACHEL Ruiz cradled her eightmonth-old daughter in her arms, stroking and
cooing to her like any loving mother.

She gave the baby a bottle and burped her, changed her diapers, smoothed her
dress and encouraged the little girl with the ready smile and dark hair to
say "hi."

All too soon the 90-minute weekly visit at the Oakland drug rehabilitation
center was over, and it was time to hand the baby to her foster mother.

Within a matter of months, Ruiz, 30, may lose all contact with her daughter.
Alameda County authorities are moving to terminate her parental rights.

Ruiz is not alone. Officials locally and elsewhere in the state and nation
are wresting children away from parents deemed unfit at a much faster rate
than be fore. This is happening because new state and federal laws -- passed
in response to a flood of abused children from drug-addicted families
entering the foster system at ever younger ages -- emphasize finding good,
permanent homes for the children as soon as possible.

For years, children yanked from homes because of neglect or abuse ended up
stuck in a sort of limbo. They often spent their en tire childhoods bouncing
from foster home to foster home, waiting for parents who never managed to
reclaim them. When they finally left the foster system as young adults, many
were so emotionally disturbed they had difficulty relating to others.

In California, the number of children in foster care by the end of 1997 had
soared to more than 92,000, after climbing an average rate of 6.2 percent in
each of the previous five years. In Alameda County alone, the number of kids
in the foster system doubled from 2,170 in 1986 to 4,489 in 1996.

A comprehensive study released last week placed much of the blame for a
taxed foster care system on drug-or alcohol-in duced parents who abuse their
children.

Recognizing the phenomenon, state and federal lawmakers began enacting
sweeping public policy changes two years ago in an ef fort to turn the tide.

They passed laws requiring child welfare workers to try to reunite children
with par ents while seeking someone to adopt them when that's not feasible.
In the past, the search for a new family only began after pa rental rights
were cut off -- something done reluctantly.

The new laws are toughest on mothers with children younger than 3, who are
al lowed six months to show they are getting their lives together and
overcoming long time, deeply entrenched drug habits.

Already, the new laws are starting to have an effect. In Alameda County, for
instance, 105 cases were referred to the County Coun sel's Office for
termination of parental rights in the first quarter of 1998, compared to 108
cases referred in all of 1995. Conse quently, adoptions have shot up -- from
93 in 1996-97 to 165 in 1997-98 to a projected 425 children in 1998-99.

The trend is similar in Contra Costa and San Joaquin counties. In Contra
Costa, 182 children were adopted in 1997-98, com pared to 157 the year
before. And in San Joaquin County, 167 children were adopted in 1997-98,
compared to 148 the previous year.

But despite the pressure to find children permanent homes, there is a danger
some will be left without parents at all, as even stepped-up adoptions fail
to keep pace with the supply of kids. The term "legal orphans" has been
coined to describe the children.

In Alameda County, about 60 children of parents who lost custody -- some of
them toddlers and others part of sibling groups -- await placement in
permanent homes. Some have been waiting their whole lives.

"The issue is controversial and manysided," Pat Engelhard, director of the
Children and Family Services Department in Alameda County, said about faster
termi nation of parental rights to free children for adoption. "This is
complex social legislation. The outcomes are really unknown.

"I don't think anyone can predict 100 percent how it's going to turn out. It
will be helpful to some. It will be extremely hurtful to others."

Many may not be sympathetic to the plight of mothers facing the loss of
their children -- some of whom are born drug-ex posed. And they may find it
even more diffi cult to understand that these same mothers have given birth
to several children with drugs in their system.

But a number of women at county treat ment centers say drugs clouded their
judgment, and that once they emerged from the haze, they felt remorse.

So says Ruiz, a third-generation heroin addict facing the loss of her baby
as a result of the new laws. With tears running down her face, she talks
about the pressures of fighting to keep her daughter and stay sober.

Ruiz's baby was born with methadone, heroin and cocaine in her system -- her
third child born exposed to drugs. Two weeks after giving birth to her
daughter at Summit Medical Center in Oakland, Ruiz entered the R.L. Geddins
Women's Empow erment Network in Oakland, a residential drug treatment center
for mothers and their children.

"I named her Esperanza, which means hope," Ruiz said of her daughter. "She
was my motivation to get in here. It has been hell. I still stuck it out
because of my love for her. I have to be in here for me now. I know that one
day, by the grace of God, we will be together."

Ruiz is fighting an uphill battle to regain custody, cut off after an
October hearing in Juvenile Dependency Court despite testi mony on Ruiz's
behalf by the treatment center counselors and founder, the baby's attorney
and her 11-year-old son's social worker. In December, she filed an appeal in
the State Court of Appeal in San Francisco.

Ruiz, a product of the foster system her self, said she knows what it's like
firsthand for children to be separated from their mothers.

"They don't live whole. They're incom plete," she said.

That ache for her mother is what made Ruiz run away at age 14 from a foster
home in Fremont, where she was cared for and loved. When she found her
mother, the ex perience was bittersweet. "She introduced me to heroin and
cocaine," Ruiz recalled.

During the years, Ruiz became so deeply enmeshed in her addiction to crack,
alcohol and heroin she couldn't lead a normal life. She was homeless for
several years, living on the streets with her oldest son, now 11. Later, she
worked as a prostitute. Only once did she hold a regular job -- as a
bartender.

She had four children, all by different fa thers. She expects to reunify
with her oldest son, who is in foster care, when she finishes her drug
program, and hopes desperately to get her little girl as well. Two other
sons -- one is 2 and the other 3 -- have been adopted. One she voluntarily
relinquished; the other she didn't.

Ruiz said overcoming her addiction, thinking of the children she has lost
and battling to keep her daughter is almost more than she can take.

"I'm trying to deal with the pain every day. Just to walk around, being
alive, car rying all this pain, it hurts," she said.

Ruiz and her counselors are angry that the county has refused to allow her
daughter to live with her at the residential program, which is intended for
mothers and their children. They say the county has denied all services to
help her reunify with her daughter.

And they don't understand why the county is willing to let her son live with
her but not the baby. They wonder why she's deemed fit to raise one child,
but not the other.

Ruiz and her counselors say she has fol lowed all her social worker's
recommenda tions to get her back on her feet -- attending classes for a high
school equivalency di ploma, taking drug tests twice a week, joining
substance abuse support groups and attending parenting classes.

"Rachel has done better than anyone I've ever known in this program," said
Sandra Mayfield, her counselor at the Women's Em powerment Network.

Ruiz believes the child's social worker and Juvenile Court Judge Robert
Kurtz, presiding over her case, are moving to take her child away because
she had lost custody of her other children. At her last hearing, Ruiz said
the judge dismissed her progress in fighting her drug addiction as "too
little, too late."

Kurtz and the social worker have not re turned phone calls to discuss the
case. Be cause of confidentiality laws, county Social Services officials
have declined to respond to questions about Ruiz's case and would only speak
in general terms about the new laws and their impacts.

In her appeal, Ruiz contends the judge didn't think she had done enough
because she hadn't entered a drug program until after her daughter's birth,
she didn't enter a program recommended by the social worker and her other
children were in the court's custody as well.

"It just shows when you're dealing with these issues, they're incredibly
difficult deci sions," said Engelhard of the Children and Family Services
Department. "We are a child-centered system. We have to make our
recommendations based on what's best for the child, not the mother."

But Ruiz believes she should be given a chance.

"It's overwhelming for parents who go through a program, who go through the
pain, the shame, the guilt. People do change. People can change. I am one of
those people who have," she said.

Ruiz is not alone in her heartbreak over the possible loss of her baby.
Parents at other drug treatment centers in Oakland and Hayward spoke about
the hardships they face.

Crystal Paschal, 33, of Oakland, says she entered the Solid Foundation
program in Oakland three days after her daughter, Mon ique, was born because
she didn't want to lose her the way she had lost her previous two children.

"I was really tired. I was mainly existing. I wasn't doing anything positive
at all," she said, referring to her cocaine addiction.

She recently completed Solid's resi dential program, where she lived with
her baby, and has moved into an apartment. She now is in her second semester
at Laney College, with a goal of becoming a nurse.

Although her life is back on track and Monique is still with her, she said
she never stops thinking about her other two children -- a son, 7, and a
daughter, 3 -- who were adopted while she was in the midst of her addiction.

"I'm going through therapy," she said. "I have a lot of guilt, a lot of
anger. ... I beat myself up constantly about not being strong enough and
turning my back on them."

Mothers are not the only parents fighting to keep custody of their children.

Kenny, a 42-year-old single father from Hayward who declined to give his
last name, said he is trying to overcome a 20-year methamphetamine habit so
he doesn't lose his three boys -- ages 10, 13 and 17.

Despite his experience as a lead shipping and warehouse worker, he finds his
mission daunting. After he leaves Cronin House in Hayward, where he is in
drug treatment, he must find a job, housing and furniture -- all in short
order.

But he's determined, saying: "I'm going to be busting my ass to do it. I'm
going to get my kids back."