ORPHANS OF ADDICTION

When a mother dies of a drug overdose, often there is no one to care
for her children.

Jane Rowe is a drug and alcohol counsellor. She steels herself to cope
with overdose deaths among the heroin-addicted adults she works with;
that kind of tragedy goes with the territory. What she cannot cut off
from, though, is the plight of the children they leave behind.

"I have seen some tragic things at funerals," she says. "I remember
one child trying to throw themself into the grave, saying: 'What are
you doing to my mummy?' I've seen other funerals where the biological
family may be at the service, but may have had no contact with the
child for years, often because of the parent's drug problem; so the
grandchild sits alone with a (welfare) worker, just so lost.

"I have got other families where the brothers and sisters have been
separated; that happens in a matter of a few hours of a parent dying.
They often have to be separated to be accommodated in foster homes and
then it takes a while to find permanent care for them. For them, it
feels like loss on top of loss."

The final straw for her was the six-year-old who lost his mum. The
woman who had fostered his mother when she was young, and who had
looked after him during his mother's spells in rehabilitation, was
desperate to take him but did not have the money or resources to care
for him.

After a sleepless night, Rowe decided something had to be done. She
phoned a musician friend, Spencer Jones, to help organise some
concerts to raise money for orphans of addiction. Maybe they could
make a difference to some kids' Christmases this year, she thought.

But the response has been so positive that, even before the concerts
next month, she has cast her aim higher. Rowe, Jones and 10 others
have established a new organisation, the Mirabel Foundation, to help
child survivors of illicit-drug deaths.

The first fund-raisers will be Kids Benefit Concerts on 8 and 9
December at the Prince of Wales hotel, Fitzroy Street, St Kilda.
Performers at the first concert include Paul Kelly, Archie Roach and
Dave Graney; the line-up for the second includes Deborah Conway and
Jones's band, Spencer P. Jones and the Last Gasp.

Jones says there has been an overwhelmingly positive response from
everyone he asked to participate. Many, like him, had not realised
that people who die from heroin addiction often leave children behind.

According to Paul Dillon, a spokesman for the National Drug and
Alcohol Research Centre, 535 Australians were reported to have died
from overdoses last year. "The typical fatal overdose person is an
unemployed man in his 30s who has been using heroin for 10-l5 years.
We are also seeing more women (overdosing) now. You would imagine that
a significant number of them would have children, but we don't have
those sorts of figures."

Melbourne's ambulance officers are familiar with the problem; some
have fought to resuscitate overdosed parents in the presence of their
children. Erik Schanssema, team manager of the mobile intensive care
unit at Dandenong, was once called to a deserted shopping centre car
park on a bleak winter's day.

Inside one car was an overdosed couple, unconscious on the front seat.
Their 18-month-old baby was strapped in a safety seat in the rear.
"The father we could resuscitate; the mother we couldn't," he says.
"They didn't seem to have given much thought to what might happen to
them, let alone what could happen to the child."

Rowe, who works at the Windana drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre
in St Kilda, acknowledges that such children have often suffered a
turbulent few years even before the death of their parents. "There's
often been a fair amount of instability," she says. "But in my
experience, they love their mother or their parents. The child wants
to be with mum or dad. It's only natural.

"The question, 'Don't you think they should be taken away from their
parents?' is a very loaded one. If a child is at risk, certainly they
need to be taken. But many of my clients have been terrific mothers:
they care about the child. It's a preconceived idea to assume that a
drug addict is a terrible parent."

She says motherhood can prove a catch-22 for women with a drug
problem: "We have many more men than women coming through
rehabilitation, simply because women can't find care for their
children while they go through the treatment.

"It's often the mother, or the most caring parent, who is most focused
on making a recovery, but, while detoxification takes only one to two
weeks, long-term rehabilitation is up to a year. Even if they find
foster care, they worry about the child. The child will miss the
parent and cry at visiting time, and then she feels she can't stay."

Rowe hopes the foundation will be able to offer orphaned children
grief counselling, holiday camps, where they can be with other kids
who have had similar experiences, and help with school and university
expenses. "Many of them are so traumatised that they fall behind in
school work, feel an absolute failure and drop out early...

"A lot of them don't have anyone to talk to about it. They will keep
the lid on their grief, but (later) it will begin to express itself in
learning problems, behavioral problems.

"There's one boy who's with his grandparents now. When his mother
died, they didn't want to acknowledge how she died. They arranged a
private funeral and a memorial service, but he wasn't allowed to go to
it. Two years down the track, he's looking at running away; he's
rebelling hard. It's because everything's been brushed under the carpet.

"(The foundation) could offer the grandparents some support and
counselling, and hopefully, if we had their trust, we could then take
the boy on camps with other kids and workers he could bond with."

These kids, she says, are the unseen victims of the drug
trade.

"They've been dealt a lousy hand ... We just want to give them some
joy. To give them some childhood."

Concert tickets, priced at $20, are available from the Prince of
Wales hotel, 29 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, tel: 9534 8251, and

Greville Records, 152 Greville Street, Prahran, tel: 9510
3012.

The Mirabel Foundation can be contacted at PO Box 1320, St Kilda
South, Victoria, 3182, tel: 9596 9693.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry