HELPING HIGH-RISK PREGNANCIES

"If I can't stop using heroin, should I consider giving my child to my
sister to raise?"

"He beats me...will he hit our kid?"

"Will the government take my baby?"

Not the sort of questions most expectant moms ask. But for a
significant portion of the population--high-risk women struggling with
substance abuse, domestic violence, poverty and involvement in the sex
trade--pregnancy raises many challenges.

In Surrey, help for these women is fragmented, with public health
nurses, social workers and addiction counsellors scrambling to make
contact and assist them.

That's about to change.

A high-risk pregnancy and parenting program will launch later this
year, thanks to $140,000 in start-up funding from B.C.'s Ministry of
Children and Family Development.

Modeled after the successful Sheway Project in Vancouver's Downtown
Eastside, the program will provide pre- and post-natal services--such
as medical care, counselling, vitamins, baby items, and food
hampers--to women who are poor, addicted, mentally ill or abused.

Staff will include nurses, doctors, dieticians, social workers and
drug and alcohol counsellors, whose aim will be to help expectant moms
deliver the healthiest babies possible.

Janice Abbott, executive director of White Rock-based Atira Women's
Resource Society, a partner in the program, said the program is badly
needed in Surrey.

"There are women out there who are six or seven or eight months
pregnant, and they haven't seen a doctor, they're afraid to see a doctor."

Fear of being judged, or worse, having their baby apprehended, keeps
many high-risk women out of the "straight" medical system, agreed Jan
Radford, director of Surrey health services in the Fraser Health Authority.

Radford, who coordinates maternity, pediatric and public health nurse
services in the South Fraser, said although social problems in Surrey
may not be as visible as in the Downtown Eastside, they are here.

She estimates 10 per cent of the 3,500 births at Surrey Memorial
Hospital each year are high-risk. That means increased costs to the
health system, as children born to drug-or alcohol-addicted women
usually have developmental delays and need community help.

"It's estimated a child with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome will cost the
system more than one million dollars in their lifetime," Radford said.
Taking children away from their moms is not the answer, minister of
Children and Family Development Gordon Hogg said.

"The thinking has been, 'We'll apprehend. The state can be a better
parent'," Hogg, MLA for Surrey-White Rock, said.

"But every study says that's not true."

While apprehension is sometimes necessary for the child's physical
well-being, it doesn't address the emotional and social needs of the
family, Hogg said.

And it doesn't produce long-term success.

With 11.3 children per 1,000 in care, B.C. has the highest rate of
child apprehension in Canada. The national average is 9.1 per 1,000.
Sixty-five per cent of apprehensions are from single parents on income
assistance, "who with some support, would be able to function," Hogg
said.

Surrey's new program would ideally provide that support for moms--in
the form of nutritious meals, counselling, and hearing and speech
tests for children--until their child reaches school age.

Lynda Dechief, coordinator of the program, said abstinence will not be
a prerequisite for accessing help--a controversial, yet necessary,
approach for reaching women.