Series: Meth In The Mother Lode (Part 2c)

FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES SUFFER, TOO

While a young mother was heating a pepperoni Hot Pocket for her 2-year-old
daughter's lunch, a social worker in the bathroom was testing the mother's
urine for traces of methamphetamine.

"I told you, I don't have a problem," the 22-year-old mother told social
worker Jessica Sausen that day late last year in a Jamestown apartment. "I
tested clean today, didn't I?"

Indeed, she did.

But that's not always the case when parents are tested for drugs, said
Tamera Dykes, program manager for Tuolumne County Child Welfare Services,
who estimated 85 percent of the cases her social workers deal with involve
drug abuse, mainly meth or alcohol.

"Methamphetamine users engage in risky behavior so they come to the
attention of law enforcement and schools more often," Dykes said. "When
kids are involved, we are involved."

Children across the country have been taken away from their meth-abusing
parents in recent years, placed with relatives or shifted into already
overloaded foster care systems. Scores have been injured, a dozen or more
killed; thousands have been born with traces of meth in their bodies.

Karen Ferguson, a CWS supervisor, said up to 95 percent of Calaveras County
child welfare cases involve drugs, most of which is meth.

She also said children in homes with meth users are 75 percent more likely
to be molested because meth lowers adult users' inhibitions.

"It seems like it always comes back to methamphetamine," said Ferguson, who
worked as a Tuolumne County social worker before becoming a CWS supervisor
in Calaveras County.

Growing Up With Crank

Earlier this year, a Tuolumne County social worker took a 7-month-old baby
from its mother after she tested positive for meth and signs the baby was
being neglected were found.

The 28-year-old mother was hysterical - just as she was when her other five
children had previously been taken away for similar reasons.

"It's the draw of the drug. They will give up anything to use, including
their children," Dykes said. "There's nothing abstract about this: If she
uses methamphetamine, then she loses her kids. But the drug is so powerful."

Ferguson, as she sat behind a desk in her San Andreas office, estimated
about one fourth of Mother Lode drug abusers within the CWS system sober up
and end up living permanently with their kids again.

CWS, a state agency, has about a dozen social workers each in Tuolumne and
Calaveras counties.

As a social worker, Ferguson used to photograph evidence at meth labs.

"With meth homes, we usually see extremely, extremely dirty homes with
little food - even rotting food sitting in pots on the stove," she said.
"Trash is everywhere - in the bedroom, on the floor. If they have pets,
there's usually feces in the house. Glass pipes on the floor, marijuana
roaches in the ashtray."

According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, 3,300 children were found
in the 8,000 meth labs seized nationwide in 2003. Last year's figures have
not been released yet.

Calaveras County Sheriff's Capt. Clay Hawkins has responded to hundreds of
meth labs over his past 15 years as director of that county's Office of
Emergency Services.

"Unfortunately, lots of children are at labs," Hawkins said. "The children
look sick. Their skin is kind of pasty looking."

Children are required to go to a hospital once they're taken "out of the
chaos" of a meth home, Ferguson said. They're given liver-function
evaluations, among other tests, to determine if any health problems
occurred from meth exposure.

Hawkins said he can't recall one case in which a doctor found nothing wrong
with a child exposed to meth and its ingredients.

If the child is under 3, then the parent has six months to complete a drug
abuse program. If over 3, the parents have up to a year to finish the
program. If they make noticeable progress, CWS can extend the parent's
rehab time to a total of 18 months.

But if a parent is sentenced to jail or prison for more than the state's
time requirement, the kids are placed with either a relative, an adoptive
family, a legal guardian or, as a last resort, foster care.

Foster System Strapped

Social workers like to keep children locally, but there are too few foster
homes between Calaveras and Tuolumne counties. So, they are often referred
to a state adoption agency in Sacramento that matches kids all over
California with a family that's ready to adopt, Ferguson said.

Children from the Mother Lode have been placed everywhere from Santa Cruz
to Bakersfield, Ferguson said, adding that CWS workers would rather send
children out of the foothills than separate siblings.

Tuolumne County has been able to keep more siblings locally since opening a
Sonora children's shelter in January 2004, said Dykes, while noting the
Mother Lode must send away about the same number of foster kids as other
rural parts of California.

The need for foster homes because of the meth epidemic has fueled the
growth of private foster care agencies.

California Foster Families, Inc., with foster homes in Calaveras and
Tuolumne counties, has an office in downtown Angels Camp.

Tracy Tousley, the agency's executive director, said 80 percent of their
cases involve drug use, mainly meth, pot and alcohol.

Calaveras County has a "crisis contract" with Environmental Alternative, a
Quincy-based nonprofit foster care agency with offices in San Andreas and
Jackson.

When a child is pulled from a dangerous situation, such as a meth lab bust,
in the middle of the night and needs to be placed with a family, CWS
workers in Calaveras County contact those at Environmental Alternative.

"The foothills in general have a higher percentage of kids exposed to a
drug environment," said Sylvia Escobar, a former regional supervisor with
Environmental Alternative. "It's a tragedy for the kids because obviously
it's giving them a very hard start in life."

'It's A Form Of Child Abuse'

Columbia Elementary School Principal Don Foster said staff members at his
540-student school deal daily with children who come from homes where meth
is used.

"The meth use becomes so important to adults, more important than feeding
their 8-year-old daughter," he said. "In my opinion, meth use is pretty
rampant in our county. It's discouraging."

Foster guessed that each of the school's 30 classrooms has one or two
students personally affected, somehow, by meth.

"We have quite a few meth babies here, where the mom abused drugs while the
child was a fetus," he said. "To me, it's a form of child abuse."

Ferguson said research has shown those born to meth-addicted mothers seem
to have behavior problems at a young age and are often misdiagnosed with
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

A child whose parents make or use the drug typically has learning
difficulties and a short attention span, Foster said.

Those students, he said, also seem to have poor attendance and require
extra attention from teachers.

One former Columbia Elementary School student slept in a closet last year
because his mom was cooking meth in his bedroom, Foster said, adding that
the boy is now in foster care in Stockton.

"The presence of drugs at home always puts students at risk," said Heather
O'Brophy, a Bret Harte High School counselor.

While some Mother Lode students have parents who abuse meth, others have
begun dabbling with the drug themselves.

Angels Camp Police Chief Tony Tacheira said his department is noticing a
new generation of meth users emerge.

"We are seeing the drug being used by kids whose parents and even
grandparents used," Tacheira said.

A Dime A Dozen

The young Jamestown mother cooking lunch for her daughter late last year
told social worker Jessica Sausen she started using drugs, mostly meth, as
a teenager.

As an abandoned child, the woman said she was shuffled from foster home to
foster home in Southern California.

When she got older, the woman was homeless at times and lived in shelters.

The child's father, also a meth user, is not in his daughter's life.

Sausen got the woman to sign an agreement stating that as long as she
tested clean and sought professional help for her drug problem, Sausen
would not take the child away.

The social worker says she always carries a drug testing kit and latex
rubber gloves in her briefcase along with a car seat in her Subaru - just
in case she does take a child away.

"If we can keep families together then that is the best," Sausen said.
"Many people think we always take the kids away, but that is a last resort."

The thin, red-haired mother and her daughter are among roughly 200 families
that social workers in Tuolumne and Calaveras counties are keeping track
of, officials said.