MORE THAN 300 BABIES BORN IN SCOTLAND EVERY YEAR ARE ADDICTED
TO DRUGS

Up to 60,000 have parents with a drug habit. Is the answer to tell
addicts: if you want help, you can't have children?

THE figures paint a bleak picture of young lives blighted by drugs in
Scotland. Up to 60,000 children are thought to live with drug-addicted
parents. Every year, more than 300 babies are born dependent on
substances such as heroin because of their mothers' use of drugs.

Behind the grim statistics are cases such as that of Derek Doran, a
two-year-old who was found dead at his home last December after
allegedly drinking meth adone. His parents have been charged with his
murder. Or the 11-year-old girl who collapsed in her primary school
class in January after smoking heroin. It later transpired her own
parents were believed to have used the drug.

These tragic stories have sparked a debate about children living on a
daily basis with the dangers of drugs and facing neglect. But while
everyone agrees that vulnerable children need to be safeguarded from
the often chaotic and unpredictable lifestyles of drug-using parents,
there appears to be little consensus on how this should be done.
Should it be a case of offering more support and understanding? Or is
it time to say enough is enough and take a tougher stance to protect
the children?

Duncan McNeil, a senior backbench Labour MSP who represents Greenock
and Inverclyde, is among those advocating the latter approach. He
provoked a storm of controversy earlier this year when he suggested
putting contraception in methadone to prevent addicts becoming parents.

Now he has put forward proposals to introduce "social contracts",
which would see drug addicts obliged to agree not to have children in
order to access certain social services. They would also have to agree
to enter a drug cessation programme, with a strict timetable outlining
when they would become drug-free. Addicts would also have to submit to
regular drug testing and agree not to start a family. If a child had
to be taken from the home into care for their own protection for a
specified number of months in a year, it would lead to them
automatically being removed altogether from their parents.

These measures, McNeil argues, would place responsibilities on drug
addicts which are currently largely non-existent, with an emphasis on
the rights of the child as a key part of the contract.

"There comes a time when he have to challenge addicts' behaviour," he
said. "I can't see that we are asking for any commitment at all from
them.

"Addicts just turn up and the support is automatic. We need to do
better than harm reduction."

Professor Neil McKeganey, director of the Centre for Drug Misuse
Research at Glasgow University, agrees with McNeil's stance on
addicts' contracts.

He said: "We have to set out a much clearer set of expectations as to
what treatment is provided. Those obligations have to be clearly set
out for drug users and service providers.

"There is a public expectation of clarity as to what that treatment is
aiming to bring about."

He added: "Drug addiction is simply incompatible with providing a safe
and nurturing environment for children. Addicts should be discouraged
from starting a family while they remain in a state of
dependency."

A survey of the numerous problems facing the children of drug addicts
shows why McKeganey and others hold this view. According to a recent
report by the charity Aberlour Child Care Trust, Have We Got Our
Priorities Right?, the children of addict parents are exposed to
levels of risk which can have a detrimental impact on them for the
rest of their lives.

The report, which reaffirmed the principle that the needs of the child
must come first, outlined the potential harmful effects of being
brought up by parents who abuse drugs or alcohol. They include the
most basic failures in children's needs - problems of physical and
emotional neglect, with young children suffering from not being kept
clean, warm and fed. Many children feel isolated and suffer stigma
associated with their parents' drug abuse.

Others have to become carers for their parents or younger siblings,
missing out on their own childhood. There is also the risk that some
children who are exposed to drugs and crime at an early age will see
this culture as the norm and become caught up in similar behaviour.
Many will under-achieve at school and will have significant problems
in finding employment.

Asked what their greatest wish was, one six-year-old quoted in the
report said simply: "My mum talking to me and watching me play the
computer." Another said: "My friends would come and play and I could
go out and play."

Kelly Bayes, head of policy at Aberlour Child Care Trust, backs some
form of social contract which would place the emphasis on the child's
needs, but argues it should not punish the parents if they fail to
meet the terms.

"It is about going into an agreement and recognising what needs to be
done and when it needs to be done by," she said. "But it is not a case
of advocating three strikes and you're out.

"You might say I'm going to try and get off drugs in the next three
years. But if you have a child aged below three, that might not be
fast enough for the child, whose development needs are many at that
age. It is about matching up needs."

Bayes also thinks that any kind of blanket approach to the problem
which fails to take in the individual family's circumstances is not
the solution.

"Sometimes there is the assumption that being on drugs equals bad
parenting and that isn't always necessarily the case," she says.

"While it would be ideal to get everybody drug-free, in the real world
that is not always practical and it could be the case that the parent
is more stable on methadone."

Sharon Munro, assistant director at Children 1st, also emphasises the
need for an individual approach to different families' situations. One
solution which the charity is pioneering is family group conferencing,
which aims to involve the wider family, such as aunts, uncles and
grandparents, in cases where a vulnerable child is at risk.

"Each child's circumstances are very different. Some children of
substance-misusing parents have a strong support network, some are
protected and cared for and others are really more vulnerable," she
says. "There is a whole spectrum of families within the
substance-using agenda.

"I think as well you have to recognise that there are loads and loads
of people who use substances that dearly love their children and
wouldn't wish to cause harm to their children.

"What we are looking to do is maximise their positive parenting
capacity and support them at times of extreme difficulties."

Harry Shapiro, spokes man for independent drugs charity Drug Scope,
also backs a more supportive app roach and describes McNeil's
proposals as "draconian". "You could apply the same thing [social
contracts] to people with mental health problems, to people who have
alcohol problems," he said. "You have to take each case on its merits,
you cannot have blanket rules like this because everybody's personal
circumstances are different and drug users are no different.

"Some of them may have been hopeless parents anyway, other people can
and do manage."

Having children can, Shapiro argues, also be a catalyst for change in
some circumstances. And he believes that having such contracts could
cause more harm than good and in some instances dissuade people from
seeking help.

"You are putting pressure on people to be drug-free and in that
situation you are almost setting people up to fail," he says.

"Already quite often women, for example, will leave presenting to
ante-natal clinics until the very last minute when problems may well
happen, because they are scared that if they are identified as drug
users automatically social services are going to take their kids away.

"With that distrust already in place, this would make a difficult
situation worse, which ultimately is going to be bad for the child and
bad for the parent."

Ruth Stark, a social worker and spokeswoman for the British
Association of Social Workers in Scotland, points out that in reality
services have to work with drug addicts if they are going to be able
to assist them.

"I do think that we have a problem in society for a number of people,
young people who are of parenting age, who are caught up in the use
and abuse of street drugs," she says.

"I think it is a huge problem we have to face, but we are only really
going to be able to manage it by providing services that are helpful
to families and children in those families, rather than being negative
and condemning and demonising.

"At the end of the day you have got to have the co-operation of the
person you are working with."

She added: "I think people take drugs to relieve pain and a lot of
that is emotional pain. Until people get down to the root of why they
are taking the drug, very often you are not going to get anywhere."

In contrast to McNeil's proposals, Stark believes the key to the
problem is to have less "policing" of addicts. She suggests that
services could be redesigned to be more useful in supporting drug addicts.

While acknowledging that the rights of the child are paramount, she is
also adamant that the proposals demanding addicts don't have children
could be seen as contravening their rights.

"I'm not so happy about interfering with people's basic rights," she
says. "I think it is a dangerous road that we go down when we do that.

"We have to be careful about respecting each other as people, and
people have the ability to make choices in their lives. I think we
have to be very careful that we don't interfere too much with that."

She adds: "One is reminded of some of the ghastly things that have
happened in terms of ethnic cleansing. Are we talking about ethnic
cleansing of people who are drug addicts?"