Illegal drugs cause woes for children and youth

By JIM RUNKLE — jrunkle@lockhaven.com
LOCK HAVEN — Cocaine was used with some frequency last year by a local woman, who happened to be pregnant at the time.

The drug crossed the barrier between mother and child, through the placenta.

The result, predictably, was considerable damage to the developing fetus.

Ask any scientist or doctor about cocaine and babies, and you’ll get a lecture noting that the developing central nervous system of the fetus is especially sensitive to the drug.

The child was taken to Hershey Medical Center shortly after its birth, and was hooked up to a large number of monitors. Medical experts would tell you the cocaine is why the child exhibited “herky jerky” limb movements, had trouble focusing her eyes and cried a lot.

Coming down from an addiction is extremely hard when you’re only a couple of days old.

Just another day in the chaotic and frustrating world of Clinton County Children and Youth Services.

A C&Y spokesman said the parents of the child saw the child — and the impact of cocaine abuse — in short, carefully monitored increments of two one-hour weekly visits at The Garden, a government building in Lock Haven.

Caseworkers handled the visits, the court hearings, the reporting of the situation to authorities. They also shepherded the baby into placement with foster parents, who might tell you quite a bit more about the little girl’s health problems — if they were allowed to do so.

In one caseworker’s office, the files of case studies reaches the ceiling and the largest individual family case is contained in a folder over six inches thick.

This particular caseworker didn’t want to be identified because she feared her clients might retaliate. Parents who are found to be criminally shortsighted don’t want to be identified, she said, for fear of judgement by the general community.

Privacy is a by-word for the agency. The anonymity exists because of the children — always innocent victims of adult behavior — who must be protected from their parents’ risky behavior or criminal intentions.

In this case, the unknowing parents could have mistaken the symptoms as colic or some other childhood malady.

That didn’t happen because somebody made a telephone call last June, when the mother was still pregnant, according to the professional assigned to the case.

The social worker has been with Children and Youth since 1999 and has been in Social Work since 1992.

“In this case we got a referral phone call expressing some concern about a mother and drug use in the city,” she said. “The calls come in to the intake worker and then the supervisors. Then the investigation is assigned to the appropriate caseworker,” she said. “I made the home visit two days later.”

The mother — at the time seven months pregnant — denied any drug use.

The caseworker lacked any legal basis for action.

“You can’t file a petition until there’s actually a child,” she said. Instead, she offered the unmarried couple her only possible option — a warning.

“I told them about drug use and my concerns for the unborn child’s well being,” she said, “but when the child is in utero, there’s not much we can do. We talk about safety and we warned if the child tests positive for drugs when it is born, the court could allow us custody.”

Several national studies suggest that mothers sometimes report they are not using drugs, when a urine screen may indicate such use. In one of these studies, 26 percent of pregnant women who tested positive for cocaine denied using it.

In this case, the boyfriend and girlfriend denied drug use, went to the hospital a few short months later and the child was born in August — when both child and mother tested positive for cocaine and marijuana.

“We alerted the hospital of that possibility,” the caseworker said. “Typically, they will look for it if we say something.”

Based upon the test results, Children and Youth obtained a court order. The caseworker was accompanied by an officer as they went to the new mother’s hospital room to take custody of the child.

“There was denial,” the caseworker said. “They said they didn’t do anything wrong and they never used drugs. We asked them how that could be given the test results? Then the story said ‘one time only but a long time ago.’ We told them that while marijuana might stay in the system for months, cocaine is typically flushed from the system within three days.”

This was a fairly easy case to resolve, the caseworker said.

“The couple eventually admitted a problem and the interested parties sat down and put together a “family service plan” and “child permanency plan.”

“What do we have to do to get our baby back?” is a fairly typical question at one of these sessions, the caseworker said.

The child remains in foster care until the couple is successful — which could be anywhere from five months to never.

A prediction?

The caseworker says the parents are already starting over at “day one” because they again tested positive for drugs.

“They aren’t there yet,” she said. “There’s been some slips and a bit of relapse so we begin from the first clean test ... They seem to be right in the middle, between drugs and the child.”

Regardless of improvements, the next stages toward reuniting the family will be incredibly difficult and complicated, given the impact drugs have had on the young one, the caseworker said.

In the meantime, they visit with the infant, attend mandatory drug and alcohol counseling, and are subjected to random drug and alcohol tests.

“We talked to the doctors about the process of drug withdrawal as it applies to an infant,” she said. “We were told you truly don’t see the impact because she’s only four months old. Doctors say you don’t really know how its going to be until the child is about two years old. Right now, she’s fussy, hard to console and has had some physical therapy because she tightens up ... It’s serious enough that we had the infant checked out at Hershey.”

The law says if the child is still in the system between 15 and 22 months, the agency can look at changing the goal from restoration of the family to something else.

The caseworker says the “something else” can include adoption, permanent placement with a legal custodian, placement with a fit and willing relative or another planned living arrangement.

Cocaine-exposed infants have special needs, including intensive parenting.

Between 10 and 20 percent of pregnant women admit to using cocaine sometime during pregnancy.