joe wrote:
0:- wrote:

Perhaps a group on CPS funding?

This is a support group for folks involved with CPS.

Not entirely.

Your pet looney rants are off topic KANE.

Your pet loony rants are off topic.

As a support group for parents involved with CPS (which is only one of
it's functions -- and not a moderated group) it has been visited by
parents that are involved with CPS and METH!

And there are more out there all the time.

Meth is a very real problem for children and their parents. Ignoring or
minimizing it is very dangerous for both.

Speak to Greg about his doing so, along with other folks that have tried
that in the past.

http://www.drugfree.org/Portal/DrugI...community.html



8/24/2005 1:49:23 PM
People often forget that meth hurts not just individuals, but families,
neighborhoods and entire communities. You might not be using meth or
know anyone who is - but it doesn't mean it's not affecting you. A meth
lab can operate unnoticed in any neighborhood for years, causing serious
health hazards to everyone around. Here are some ways that meth might
find its way into your life:

Environmental Harm: For each pound of meth produced, five to six pounds
of hazardous waste are generated, posing immediate and long-term
environmental health risks. The chemicals used to make meth are toxic,
and the lab operators routinely dump waste into streams, rivers, fields,
backyards and sewage systems, which can in turn contaminate water
resources for humans and animals. Also, the poisonous vapors produced
during cooking permeate the halls and carpets of houses and buildings,
often making them uninhabitable. Cleaning up these sites requires
specialized training and costs an average of $2,000-$4,000 per site in
funds that come out of the already-strained budgets of state and local
police. In addition, property owners are often held liable for the cost
of the cleanup, so if a rental landlord finds that his tenant has been
operating a meth lab on or in his property, or if a landowner finds that
a clandestine lab has property, he could face devastating financial issues.

Puts Children at Risk: Hundreds of children are neglected every year
after living with parents who are meth "cooks." Children who reside in
or near meth labs are at a great risk of being harmed in such a toxic
environment, due to the noxious fumes which can cause brain damage and
the explosive elements that go into making the drug. Cooking meth is
extremely dangerous, and labs often catch on fire and explode. A child
living inside could overdose from meth left out by parents, suffer from
attachment disorders or behavioral problems, be malnourished, physically
or sexually abused and/or burned or fatally injured from a fire or
explosion.

Orphaned Children: The number of foster care children has been rising
rapidly in states that have been hit by the meth scourge. Children are
taken from their parents who may have been using or making
methamphetamine, and placed in foster homes, crowding an already
overflowing system with limited resources. According to an article in
The New York Times, it has also become difficult to attract foster
parents for these children because they often have many behavior
problems. For example, they can't sleep at night since they are used to
sleeping on a floor and they often have not been toilet trained due to
the neglectful nature of their upbringing. This overwhelming influx of
cases has been suffocating social workers, leaving them desperate for help.

HIV/AIDS: On meth, users can feel hypersexual and uninhibited, often
forgetting to use protection. Also, since meth can be administered
intravenously some users opt for dirty needles. These acts of
carelessness can lead to the transmission of serious and deadly
diseases, such as hepatitis, HIV and AIDS.

Hospitals and Burn Units: Meth production is a dangerous and illegal
business that takes place in living spaces - from kitchens to basements
to hotel rooms. The materials that are used to produce the drug are
toxic and often flammable and any mistakes can result in an explosion or
injury to not just the meth cook, but their families as well. These
chemical burns are tough to treat, and extremely expensive. Much of the
care in these specialized units goes uncompensated, which puts a great
financial strain on the hospitals and state medical programs.

Crime: Meth labs along with the selling of the drug can breed crime,
including burglaries, thefts and even murder. Both teenagers and adults
addicted to the drug and who have no income to pay for their habit, may
steal valuables from their own homes or even their friends' homes. High
on meth, there's no telling what a person would do if provoked - people
have been killed for not owing up to a drug payment or coming through on
a transaction. This type of crime requires a great deal of attention
from the police, for which a town may not have the funding or the
resources to spare. ...

You might want to actually look at the problem you wish to ignore or
minimize.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=Google+Search

Here's a little shot to the head from the child's point of view:

http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/06/061...phetamine.html

Study elicits 'child's eye' view of methamphetamine abuse and its effects

Craig Chamberlain, News Editor
217-333-2894;

6/12/06

Part of the team involved in the ongoing University of Illinois research
project on methamphetamine use in seven Central Illinois counties:
(sitting) Teresa Ostler, professor of social work; (from left) Rebecca
Jones, retired DCFS professional supervising aspects of the project;
Anne Robertson, Kathryn Sheridan, Marcia Martinez and Ga-young Choi, all
doctoral students involved with the project; and Wendy Haight, professor
of social work and the lead researcher on the project. Missing from the
photo are study co-authors James Black, a psychiatrist with Southern
Illinois University School of Medicine, and Linda Kingery, a
child-welfare worker in the Charleston field office of DCFS.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The children’s stories are distressing: They had been
left alone and hungry for days, were physically abused, forced to get
high, told to steal from loved ones and to lie to authorities, and they
had seen their parents “hyper” and delusional.

They had been traumatized, many of them, but they had also been
resourceful and resilient. All had been taken from their rural homes and
were now in foster care, with some struggling to adjust and some doing
remarkably well.

They are the children of methamphetamine users, and they were the
subject of a study, apparently the first, to get a child’s-eye view of
what happens in these families and how it affects the children.

“We’re not aware of other studies that look at the effects of being
reared in a methamphetamine-involved family on children’s psychological
development,” said Wendy Haight, a professor of social work at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the lead researcher.

The study will be published in the journal Children and Youth Services
Review (CYSR).

The aim of the study was to gather information that could help these
children and others like them in the often-difficult adjustment to
foster care and beyond, Haight said.

“We want to help foster parents understand more about what the child has
gone through,” said study co-author Teresa Ostler, a social work
professor at Illinois who specializes in clinical psychology. “A lot of
it involves experiences of trauma, where the child needs huge help in
putting things together and in making sense, in knowing that their
feelings have reasons.”

The study involved 18 children, ages 7-14, from 12 families. All were
involved with the child-welfare system because of their parents’
methamphetamine abuse. At the time of their interviews, they had been in
foster care anywhere from five to 39 months, with 15.6 months the average.

The central focus of the study were semi-structured interviews with each
child, conducted by a psychiatrist or child clinical psychologist, which
lasted about 30 minutes and were audiotaped. The interviews were then
transcribed and coded by other researchers to produce specific data.

Methamphetamine can have profound effects on the user, Haight said,
including extreme irritability, paranoia and heightened sexual arousal.
Users can go on days-long highs, followed by days of sleep. “These are
adults behaving in very unpredictable, dangerous ways, and the child is
there too,” she said.

In most of these families, parents also were making the drug, sometimes
involving their children in criminal behavior, and possibly exposing
some to toxic fumes and the danger of explosions or fires.

“Meth has such a rapid effect that you see parenting just break down
literally,” Ostler said. “Families change rapidly in that time and I
think that’s very terrifying for children,” she said.

Yet despite those conditions, the researchers found that when the
children were asked about “sad or scary times,” they talked first or
most often about the experience of losing their parents, even months
later, Haight said. “Most want desperately to be with their families and
feel a great deal of pain and grief over being separated from their
parents.”

Another complication is that some of these children had taken on the
role of caring for their parents, as well as younger siblings, when
their parents were under the influence. One child asked who would watch
over her mother when she was “sick,” Haight said. They also experience
emotional harm from the stigma of being the children of methamphetamine
users, many of whom face years in prison.

The children often also carry a strong distrust of authority figures,
passed on from their parents as a result of the criminal activity
involved, sometimes reinforced by a meth-induced paranoia. Some have
been actively socialized into a rural drug culture. “It becomes a huge
blockage” to intervention in some cases, Ostler said.

For children raised from an early age with their parents using
methamphetamine, even routine aspects of family life, like regular meal
and bed times, may represent “culture shock,” the authors say.

The researchers are using what they’ve learned from this study and
previous research to develop materials for use not only by foster
parents, but also by child-welfare workers and other professionals. “We
get more requests than we can accommodate from people just desperate for
some information,” Haight said.

They also are conducting weekly sessions, or interventions, in the
foster homes of the children who took part in the study, with support
from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. They are
working to develop a model in which local professionals are the ones
directly involved with the families, but with supervision from
university psychologists and psychiatrists.

As a result of the study, the researchers suggest that additional
resources and services, in particular mental health services, need to be
more accessible for these children and their foster parents.

Haight also pointed out that teachers in rural schools are often the
first to know and get involved when methamphetamine abuse comes into a
family, giving children everything from extra attention to food and
clothes. With additional funding, the schools could play a larger role,
she said.

Even with what many of these children have dealt with, Haight stressed
that they are not just passive victims. “Not only have they experienced
these horrible situations, but they survived, and you can’t help having
some respect for that,” she said. They responded in a variety of ways,
and were often very resourceful in the process, she said.

The study is part of an ongoing U. of I. research project, also led by
Haight, in seven Central Illinois counties (Clark, Coles, Cumberland,
Douglas, Edgar, Moultrie and Shelby). The counties are served by the
Charleston field office of DCFS, which is collaborating on the project.
The research was funded by an Arnold O. Beckman Award from the
University Research Board at Illinois.

Other co-authors of the study were James Black, a psychiatrist with the
Southern Illinois University School of Medicine in Springfield; Linda
Kingery, a child-welfare worker in the Charleston field office of DCFS;
and Kathryn Sheridan, a graduate student in social work.

The CYSR article, titled "A Child's-Eye View of Parent Methamphetamine
Abuse: Implications for Helping Foster Families to Succeed," is
currently "in press." An earlier study from the project was published in
the August 2005 issue of CYSR.