Meth hysteria: CPS's latest excuse to take child and run

And that’s why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is neither
meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction problem in
child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private child
welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to
their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they’re putting their addiction ahead of the children.


Kinda like you - huh Kane/Don/d'geezer?? lol.


======================================
EPIDEMIC OF HYPE
How hysteria over methamphetamine has become the latest excuse to
“take the child and run.”

“A cohort of babies is now being born whose future is closed to them
from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable
deviance, of permanent inferiority. At best, a menial life of severe
deprivation. And all of this is being biologically determined from birth."

If that sounds like something you just read about methamphetamine,
that’s understandable. It certainly sounds like the apocalyptic quotes
that have appeared in 2005 and 2006 everywhere from The New York Times
to Newsweek to CBS and NBC News.
In fact, the quote dates back to 1989. Columnist Charles Krauthammer
was writing not about methamphetamine, but about crack cocaine.
None of it was true.
More than two decades later, it is clear that the horrifying
predictions about so-called “crack babies” were the result of hype and
hysteria, not science and scholarship. Indeed, as the website stats.org
concluded: Being labeled a "crack baby" appears to have done more harm
to these children than the cocaine itself did.” Another stats.org
article on media meth myths is available here.
But it wasn’t just the babies who were stereotyped and stigmatized. We
were repeatedly told that crack was harder on children because of its
special appeal to women. We were told that crack was so addictive that
it stole these mothers’ material instinct. And we were told crack
addiction was virtually untreatable.
None of it was true.
The false claims were used as an all-purpose justification for soaring
numbers of foster care placements, by child welfare systems whose
response to every problem can be boiled down to “take the child and
run.” The label “crack addict” was thrown around with the same abandon
as the label “crack baby,” and the assumption was that, since there was
no hope for the mothers, the only alternative was foster-care for the
children. Any time anyone questioned the high rate at which children
were removed from their homes, the child welfare establishment blithely
labeled every case a “crack case” and insisted there was no choice.
None of it was true.
Indeed, by October 2004, Columbia Journalism Review had published an
article ending with a plea to journalists not to make the same mistakes
with “meth” as they made with crack. But, it seems, few reporters
listened. One need only substitute “crack” for “meth” and the recent
crop of stories sound identical to their counterparts from the 1980s.
If anything, the term used for children this time is even more
insidious: To call a child a “meth orphan” writes off both the child and
his or her parents.

The problem is real, the solutions have been phony

There is something else that addiction to crack and meth have in
common: Both are very serious, very real problems. Addiction to either
substance requires intervention to ensure that children are safe. The
issue is how to intervene. Sometimes there truly is no choice but to
remove the children and place them in foster care. In other cases,
children can be placed with extended family members. But in many other
cases, there is another option that should be tried first: drug
treatment, including inpatient programs where parents can remain with
their children.

Meth addiction is treatable

A review of the literature by Prof. Richard Rawson, Associate Director
of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at UCLA’s David Geffen School of
Medicine, concludes that addiction to methamphetamine is just as
treatable as addiction to cocaine. Furthermore, it takes no longer to
treat meth addiction than to treat any other drug addiction.
And Dr. Rawson is not alone in his assessment.
His assessment that meth is just as treatable and takes no longer to
treat is confirmed by a Washington State study. The title says it all:
Treatment for Methamphetamine Dependency is as Effective as Treatment
for Any Other Drug. (If clicking on this link leads to a password
request, click “cancel” and you’ll still be able to see the document).
According to a letter signed by 93 medical doctors, scientists,
researchers in psychology and treatment specialists:
“[C]laims that methamphetamine users are virtually untreatable with
small recovery rates lack foundation in medical research. Analysis of
dropout, retention in treatment and re-incarceration rates and other
measures of outcome, in several recent studies indicate that
methamphetamine users respond in an equivalent manner as individuals
admitted for other drug abuse problems. Research also suggests the need
to improve and expand treatment offered to methamphetamine users.”
Further evidence comes from a county often identified in media accounts
as hard-hit by meth, Sacramento County, California. According to the
federal government’s National Center on Substance Abuse and Child
Welfare, the county developed a comprehensive approach to such cases,
emphasizing treatment. Between 1998 and 2004, the number of children
taken from their parents actually has declined by more than one-third.
The emphasis on treatment has reduced the length of time in foster care
for children who must be removed from their homes. And the county
actually is getting better treatment results for parents addicted to
meth than for those using cocaine or heroin.
The notion that there is no point in trying drug treatment in meth
cases because it won’t work or it takes too long is one more meth myth.

Why bother with treatment?

But why bother? Why bother helping a parent who is addicted to meth?
Here again, there are lessons from crack.
University of Florida researchers studied two groups of infants born
with cocaine in their systems. One group was placed in foster care, the
other with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the
babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development:
rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Consistently, the children
placed with their birth mothers did better. For the foster children,
being taken from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.
Still another study looked at foster care “alumni.” Among the conclusions:
· Alumni of foster care suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at a rate
more than double the rate for Gulf War Veterans.
· At least one-third said they were abused by a foster parent or another
adult in a foster home. (The study didn’t even ask about one of the
most common sources of abuse in foster care, foster children abusing
each other, so the real figure almost certainly is higher).
· Only 20 percent of the alumni could be said to be doing well. (For
more on this study, see NCCPR’s analysis, 80 Percent Failure, available
at www.nccpr.org.)
It is extremely difficult to take a swing at “bad mothers” without the
blow landing on their children. If we really believe all the rhetoric
about putting the needs of children first, then we need to put those
needs ahead of everything – including how we may feel about their
parents. That doesn’t mean we can simply leave children with addicts.
It does mean that drug treatment for the parent is almost always a
better first choice than foster care for the child -- because it is
urgent to save children from people in the grip of another addiction: an
addiction to foster care so powerful that they would throw children far
too easily into a system that churns out walking wounded four times out
of five.

Statistics abuse

Estimates of the number of cases in which drugs in general or any drug
in particular are “involved” in child welfare cases are just guesses – a
caseworker checks a box on a form because she thinks maybe there are
drugs involved in some way; a supervisor guesses how often that box has
been checked on the form, the p.r. person for the child welfare agency
guesses how often supervisors have told him they’re seeing the box
checked on the form. And everyone has an incentive to guess high –
since it’s considered an automatic justification for tearing a child
from everyone loving and familiar.
It’s no wonder that estimates for the proportion of cases involving any
drug, range from 20 percent to 90 percent.
The term “involved” contributes to the hype.
Consider a case profiled in a thoughtful, careful way by the Portland
Oregonian. The mother used meth, but was in outpatient treatment and
doing well. The father was not accused of drug use at all. The child
was in foster care because there was no inpatient drug treatment
facility in the local community for the mother, and because of child
welfare systems’ pervasive bias against fathers.
Yet, for statistical purposes, this is a “meth case.” And when child
welfare agencies claim that a huge percentage of their cases “involve”
meth use, that includes cases like this one.
The problem is compounded when organizations lobbying for more funding
get into the mix. Many news accounts still accept at face value a
stacked-deck survey from the National Association of Counties. Among
the claims repeated over and over again: 71 percent of the counties
surveyed in California reported an increase in foster care because of
meth. But only reporters who looked at the fine print would discover
that only seven of California’s 58 counties were surveyed.

But what about the labs?

Unlike crack cocaine, methamphetamine can be manufactured in home labs
– and almost every news account emphasizes the labs and children taken
from those labs. But such cases represent only a tiny fraction of “meth
cases.”
Between 2000 and 2003, child protective services agencies removed
children from their parents 1,188,000 times. During that same time
period, 10,580 children were found to be “affected” by methamphetamine
manufacture, with 4,662 living in labs and 2,881 of them placed in
foster care. (Many of the others probably were placed informally with
relatives).
In other words, of all the entries into foster care from 2000 to 2003,
at least 99.1 percent of them had nothing to do with meth labs.
Even in Oregon, the substance abuse program manager for the state child
welfare agency says that “…the number of times that [child protective]
workers confronted actual manufacturing was rare in their practice
compared to the number of families affected by methamphetamine abuse and
dependence.”

Some states respond better than others

Oregon is one state that has been hard hit by meth. But,
unfortunately, like other states, such as Iowa and Colorado, Oregon also
is a state addicted to excuses.
· Oregon took away children, proportionately, at one of the highest
rates in the country as far back as 1985. Why were so many children
being taken then, long before any “meth epidemic”?
· Oregon, Iowa, and Colorado all take away children at a rate
significantly higher than California – long another state known for
having a serious meth problem.
· Alabama has a serious meth problem – and it’s had an impact on the
foster care population, with increases in removals in recent years. But
before meth hit, Alabama was hit by a class-action lawsuit requiring the
state to thoroughly reform its system to emphasize family preservation.
As a result, Alabama gained years of experience in safely keeping
children out of foster care, making it better able to handle the influx
of meth cases. So today, despite meth, Alabama still takes away
children at one of the lowest rates in the nation. At the same time,
re-abuse of children left in their own homes has been cut by 60 percent
– to less than half the national average – and, an independent court
monitor has found that, as a result of the reforms, child safety has
improved.
· Illinois also has a meth problem. Yet Illinois removes children at a
rate even lower than Alabama, and, again, independent court-appointed
monitors say as foster care has been reduced, child safety has improved.
And as noted above, by emphasizing treatment, Sacramento County,
California has been able to cope with a serious meth problem while
reducing entries into foster care.
A good child welfare system does such a good job of keeping other
children safely in their own homes, that when a new drug becomes the
scourge of the state, the system can handle it.

A political agenda

Hysteria over drugs has always been fueled by those with a vested
interest in taking away children, and the current wave of meth stories
is no exception.
In part, there is a political motivation behind the false claims about
meth. The federal government wants to allow states to use billions of
dollars now reserved for foster care for various prevention programs,
including drug treatment. But the child welfare establishment wants to
hoard the money for foster care.
Not only can this money be used only for foster care, the funding is
fueled by child removal. For every eligible child they put into foster
care, states get from 50 to 83 cents back on the dollar for foster care
costs.
The child welfare establishment wants us to believe that
methamphetamine is virtually untreatable because they want us to believe
the only option for the children is foster care. They want us to
believe the only option is foster care in order to justify their demand
that those billions of dollars be reserved for foster care, and nothing
else.
Indeed, the campaign against making foster care funding flexible has
been led by the Child Welfare League of America, the trade association
for public and private agencies. Most private agencies are paid for each
day they hold a child in foster care. Anything that threatens to close
the “open spigot” of federal foster care aid threatens the ability of
states to keep doling out per diem payments to private agencies for
endless foster care. That threatens the private agencies’ existence.
And that’s why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is
neither meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction
problem in child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private
child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are
addicted to their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they’re putting their addiction ahead of the children.
Updated, June 10, 2006

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

0:-] wrote:
On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 19:58:12 -0400, Lester Dolt
wrote:

...very old news, krp....

This "study" founders on the claim that children in foster care did
less well than children with their own druggie mothers.

Find the study. Look carefully at it. Note the support system
provided. NOTHING like the foster parents had.

The mother had NO other responsibilites, likely homemaker services,
(common to pilot programs).

The ask youself, if this was such a successful program why did the
state simply NOT do it everywhere in the state?

Money, child.

I was HUGELY expensive was was specially funded for research...NOT
REAL LIFE.

The could not sell it to the lawmakers, or the public.

This is a common pattern.

Every worker in the country, that is new and unseasoned politically
was drooling over this program, and couldn't wait to get their cocaine
using mothers into it.

The old timers, and I've watched CPS closely since 1976, just smiled
at the new kids, knowing they'd learn political reality the hard
way....just as it should be learned.

Yer a liar, child, because you KNOW these things.

And you still try to sell bogus reseach.

I don't care how many "experts" claimed cocaine wasn't that bad, etc.
blah blah blah. I knew a whole SLEW of medical foster moms, most
retired pediatric nurses.

They told and SHOWED me the horror show of addicted and drug effected
babies.

You what what is totally phony about this study?

The most carefully screened the test group for COCAINE USING ONLY
mothers.

Ask any worker from those days how many coke only users they had in
their caseloads.

The same, dumbo, is true of meth. Folks that do meth don't just do
meth.

And the test groups for THAT so called study and survey, were very
likely finely screened.

You don't get relevant data if you try to test a demographic that has
untold variations of MULTIPLE DRUG USE MIXING ON SCHEDULES IT'S
IMPOSSIBLE TO GET ACCURATE INFORMATION FROM THE USER ABOUT.

It's were the rubber hits the road that matters. What do treatment
people actually see?

In meth addiction one hell of a lot of psychotic patients. They make
POOR test subjects.

And meth psychosis is just a tad different than those associated with
other drugs. The patient is almost every time, HOMICIDALLY dangers,
as well as being an extremely high risk for escaping the program.

You are either eating propaganda inadvertantly and vomiting it up like
you love the taste and want more, or you KNOW their are liars in this
"professional" field, and IT'S ALL POLITICAL, dummy.


And that’s why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is neither
meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction problem in
child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private child
welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to
their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they’re putting their addiction ahead of the children.

Bull****. Stop blaming CPS then. You just included my own FAVORITE
blame group for the problem, just one down from pinnacle for blame.

At the top are the legislators that allow themselves to be lobbied by
those listed about, an go for the gold by passing into law schemes to
enrich their buddies.

And scummyboy, it is NOT limited to any one special government
program.

You never debated honestly before, and you aren't doing so now.

Because you are a liar, a congenital one. Compulsively addicted
yourself to the lie that serves your sick agenda of vengence.

How long ago was it you lost your children again?


Kinda like you - huh Kane/Don/d'geezer?? lol.

No, kinda like YOU, a sick **** that can't get over he was an abusive
violent and child raping incest freak and the state saved his children
from him. 0:]

WTF are you talking about? Don you're all mixed up again. It's you who
pimp for fags and perverts - it's you whos life revolves around faggots
and incest.

You don't know me from a can of spam asswipe.

Why was your first post to usenet to praise butt****ers and pimp
helpless children??

Why is your miserable life centered on perversion , filth, and lies?

Did daddy grab your ears asswipe??






======================================
EPIDEMIC OF HYPE
How hysteria over methamphetamine has become the latest excuse to
“take the child and run.”

“A cohort of babies is now being born whose future is closed to them
from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable
deviance, of permanent inferiority. At best, a menial life of severe
deprivation. And all of this is being biologically determined from birth."

If that sounds like something you just read about methamphetamine,
that’s understandable. It certainly sounds like the apocalyptic quotes
that have appeared in 2005 and 2006 everywhere from The New York Times
to Newsweek to CBS and NBC News.
In fact, the quote dates back to 1989. Columnist Charles Krauthammer
was writing not about methamphetamine, but about crack cocaine.
None of it was true.
More than two decades later, it is clear that the horrifying
predictions about so-called “crack babies” were the result of hype and
hysteria, not science and scholarship. Indeed, as the website stats.org
concluded: Being labeled a "crack baby" appears to have done more harm
to these children than the cocaine itself did.” Another stats.org
article on media meth myths is available here.
But it wasn’t just the babies who were stereotyped and stigmatized. We
were repeatedly told that crack was harder on children because of its
special appeal to women. We were told that crack was so addictive that
it stole these mothers’ material instinct. And we were told crack
addiction was virtually untreatable.
None of it was true.
The false claims were used as an all-purpose justification for soaring
numbers of foster care placements, by child welfare systems whose
response to every problem can be boiled down to “take the child and
run.” The label “crack addict” was thrown around with the same abandon
as the label “crack baby,” and the assumption was that, since there was
no hope for the mothers, the only alternative was foster-care for the
children. Any time anyone questioned the high rate at which children
were removed from their homes, the child welfare establishment blithely
labeled every case a “crack case” and insisted there was no choice.
None of it was true.
Indeed, by October 2004, Columbia Journalism Review had published an
article ending with a plea to journalists not to make the same mistakes
with “meth” as they made with crack. But, it seems, few reporters
listened. One need only substitute “crack” for “meth” and the recent
crop of stories sound identical to their counterparts from the 1980s.
If anything, the term used for children this time is even more
insidious: To call a child a “meth orphan” writes off both the child and
his or her parents.

The problem is real, the solutions have been phony

There is something else that addiction to crack and meth have in
common: Both are very serious, very real problems. Addiction to either
substance requires intervention to ensure that children are safe. The
issue is how to intervene. Sometimes there truly is no choice but to
remove the children and place them in foster care. In other cases,
children can be placed with extended family members. But in many other
cases, there is another option that should be tried first: drug
treatment, including inpatient programs where parents can remain with
their children.

Meth addiction is treatable

A review of the literature by Prof. Richard Rawson, Associate Director
of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at UCLA’s David Geffen School of
Medicine, concludes that addiction to methamphetamine is just as
treatable as addiction to cocaine. Furthermore, it takes no longer to
treat meth addiction than to treat any other drug addiction.
And Dr. Rawson is not alone in his assessment.
His assessment that meth is just as treatable and takes no longer to
treat is confirmed by a Washington State study. The title says it all:
Treatment for Methamphetamine Dependency is as Effective as Treatment
for Any Other Drug. (If clicking on this link leads to a password
request, click “cancel” and you’ll still be able to see the document).
According to a letter signed by 93 medical doctors, scientists,
researchers in psychology and treatment specialists:
“[C]laims that methamphetamine users are virtually untreatable with
small recovery rates lack foundation in medical research. Analysis of
dropout, retention in treatment and re-incarceration rates and other
measures of outcome, in several recent studies indicate that
methamphetamine users respond in an equivalent manner as individuals
admitted for other drug abuse problems. Research also suggests the need
to improve and expand treatment offered to methamphetamine users.”
Further evidence comes from a county often identified in media accounts
as hard-hit by meth, Sacramento County, California. According to the
federal government’s National Center on Substance Abuse and Child
Welfare, the county developed a comprehensive approach to such cases,
emphasizing treatment. Between 1998 and 2004, the number of children
taken from their parents actually has declined by more than one-third.
The emphasis on treatment has reduced the length of time in foster care
for children who must be removed from their homes. And the county
actually is getting better treatment results for parents addicted to
meth than for those using cocaine or heroin.
The notion that there is no point in trying drug treatment in meth
cases because it won’t work or it takes too long is one more meth myth.

Why bother with treatment?

But why bother? Why bother helping a parent who is addicted to meth?
Here again, there are lessons from crack.
University of Florida researchers studied two groups of infants born
with cocaine in their systems. One group was placed in foster care, the
other with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the
babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development:
rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Consistently, the children
placed with their birth mothers did better. For the foster children,
being taken from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.
Still another study looked at foster care “alumni.” Among the conclusions:
· Alumni of foster care suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at a rate
more than double the rate for Gulf War Veterans.
· At least one-third said they were abused by a foster parent or another
adult in a foster home. (The study didn’t even ask about one of the
most common sources of abuse in foster care, foster children abusing
each other, so the real figure almost certainly is higher).
· Only 20 percent of the alumni could be said to be doing well. (For
more on this study, see NCCPR’s analysis, 80 Percent Failure, available
at www.nccpr.org.)
It is extremely difficult to take a swing at “bad mothers” without the
blow landing on their children. If we really believe all the rhetoric
about putting the needs of children first, then we need to put those
needs ahead of everything – including how we may feel about their
parents. That doesn’t mean we can simply leave children with addicts.
It does mean that drug treatment for the parent is almost always a
better first choice than foster care for the child -- because it is
urgent to save children from people in the grip of another addiction: an
addiction to foster care so powerful that they would throw children far
too easily into a system that churns out walking wounded four times out
of five.

Statistics abuse

Estimates of the number of cases in which drugs in general or any drug
in particular are “involved” in child welfare cases are just guesses – a
caseworker checks a box on a form because she thinks maybe there are
drugs involved in some way; a supervisor guesses how often that box has
been checked on the form, the p.r. person for the child welfare agency
guesses how often supervisors have told him they’re seeing the box
checked on the form. And everyone has an incentive to guess high –
since it’s considered an automatic justification for tearing a child
from everyone loving and familiar.
It’s no wonder that estimates for the proportion of cases involving any
drug, range from 20 percent to 90 percent.
The term “involved” contributes to the hype.
Consider a case profiled in a thoughtful, careful way by the Portland
Oregonian. The mother used meth, but was in outpatient treatment and
doing well. The father was not accused of drug use at all. The child
was in foster care because there was no inpatient drug treatment
facility in the local community for the mother, and because of child
welfare systems’ pervasive bias against fathers.
Yet, for statistical purposes, this is a “meth case.” And when child
welfare agencies claim that a huge percentage of their cases “involve”
meth use, that includes cases like this one.
The problem is compounded when organizations lobbying for more funding
get into the mix. Many news accounts still accept at face value a
stacked-deck survey from the National Association of Counties. Among
the claims repeated over and over again: 71 percent of the counties
surveyed in California reported an increase in foster care because of
meth. But only reporters who looked at the fine print would discover
that only seven of California’s 58 counties were surveyed.

But what about the labs?

Unlike crack cocaine, methamphetamine can be manufactured in home labs
– and almost every news account emphasizes the labs and children taken
from those labs. But such cases represent only a tiny fraction of “meth
cases.”
Between 2000 and 2003, child protective services agencies removed
children from their parents 1,188,000 times. During that same time
period, 10,580 children were found to be “affected” by methamphetamine
manufacture, with 4,662 living in labs and 2,881 of them placed in
foster care. (Many of the others probably were placed informally with
relatives).
In other words, of all the entries into foster care from 2000 to 2003,
at least 99.1 percent of them had nothing to do with meth labs.
Even in Oregon, the substance abuse program manager for the state child
welfare agency says that “…the number of times that [child protective]
workers confronted actual manufacturing was rare in their practice
compared to the number of families affected by methamphetamine abuse and
dependence.”

Some states respond better than others

Oregon is one state that has been hard hit by meth. But,
unfortunately, like other states, such as Iowa and Colorado, Oregon also
is a state addicted to excuses.
· Oregon took away children, proportionately, at one of the highest
rates in the country as far back as 1985. Why were so many children
being taken then, long before any “meth epidemic”?
· Oregon, Iowa, and Colorado all take away children at a rate
significantly higher than California – long another state known for
having a serious meth problem.
· Alabama has a serious meth problem – and it’s had an impact on the
foster care population, with increases in removals in recent years. But
before meth hit, Alabama was hit by a class-action lawsuit requiring the
state to thoroughly reform its system to emphasize family preservation.
As a result, Alabama gained years of experience in safely keeping
children out of foster care, making it better able to handle the influx
of meth cases. So today, despite meth, Alabama still takes away
children at one of the lowest rates in the nation. At the same time,
re-abuse of children left in their own homes has been cut by 60 percent
– to less than half the national average – and, an independent court
monitor has found that, as a result of the reforms, child safety has
improved.
· Illinois also has a meth problem. Yet Illinois removes children at a
rate even lower than Alabama, and, again, independent court-appointed
monitors say as foster care has been reduced, child safety has improved.
And as noted above, by emphasizing treatment, Sacramento County,
California has been able to cope with a serious meth problem while
reducing entries into foster care.
A good child welfare system does such a good job of keeping other
children safely in their own homes, that when a new drug becomes the
scourge of the state, the system can handle it.

A political agenda

Hysteria over drugs has always been fueled by those with a vested
interest in taking away children, and the current wave of meth stories
is no exception.
In part, there is a political motivation behind the false claims about
meth. The federal government wants to allow states to use billions of
dollars now reserved for foster care for various prevention programs,
including drug treatment. But the child welfare establishment wants to
hoard the money for foster care.
Not only can this money be used only for foster care, the funding is
fueled by child removal. For every eligible child they put into foster
care, states get from 50 to 83 cents back on the dollar for foster care
costs.
The child welfare establishment wants us to believe that
methamphetamine is virtually untreatable because they want us to believe
the only option for the children is foster care. They want us to
believe the only option is foster care in order to justify their demand
that those billions of dollars be reserved for foster care, and nothing
else.
Indeed, the campaign against making foster care funding flexible has
been led by the Child Welfare League of America, the trade association
for public and private agencies. Most private agencies are paid for each
day they hold a child in foster care. Anything that threatens to close
the “open spigot” of federal foster care aid threatens the ability of
states to keep doling out per diem payments to private agencies for
endless foster care. That threatens the private agencies’ existence.
And that’s why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is
neither meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction
problem in child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private
child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are
addicted to their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they’re putting their addiction ahead of the children.
Updated, June 10, 2006


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

0:-] wrote:
On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 19:58:12 -0400, Lester Dolt
wrote:

...very old news, krp....

No - it's updated. And accurate.

That CPS apologists and those who's livlihood depends on such lies don't
want it to be true is understandable.

After all, who wants to admit that their CPS scumsucking life of
destroying families and abusing children was all based on faulty logic
and outright lies.




This "study" founders on the claim that children in foster care did
less well than children with their own druggie mothers.


Find the study. Look carefully at it. Note the support system
provided. NOTHING like the foster parents had.


You're all mixed up Don. There is such a shortage of 'foster parents'
that the states will give kids to any scumsucker that can fog a mirror.
Who cares what happens to the kids as long as you get paid.

Just lie, lie, lie, deny, deny. And keep posting irrelevant kb's of
gibberish. Keep the money flowing, the children be damed.

What a ****in case you are Don - without a doubt the lowest scumbag I've
ever had the displeasure to meet -

You don't have a clue - except CPS is great, parents are abusers, and
folks who disagree are liars and liberals.

You perverts take the cake.

Still didn't say why you lied to get access to your states most
vulnerable children, then spammed them to faggots on usenet like pork
sausage on ebay?? lol.

Can't you at least give us a clue as to what went through you sick,
demented mind to have you hatch a plan like that.

You should be in a penitentary, paying for misery your sick narcissism
has wrought on innocent families.

Hey Don -- have you hugged a butt****er today



======================================
EPIDEMIC OF HYPE
How hysteria over methamphetamine has become the latest excuse to
“take the child and run.”

“A cohort of babies is now being born whose future is closed to them
from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable
deviance, of permanent inferiority. At best, a menial life of severe
deprivation. And all of this is being biologically determined from birth."

If that sounds like something you just read about methamphetamine,
that’s understandable. It certainly sounds like the apocalyptic quotes
that have appeared in 2005 and 2006 everywhere from The New York Times
to Newsweek to CBS and NBC News.
In fact, the quote dates back to 1989. Columnist Charles Krauthammer
was writing not about methamphetamine, but about crack cocaine.
None of it was true.
More than two decades later, it is clear that the horrifying
predictions about so-called “crack babies” were the result of hype and
hysteria, not science and scholarship. Indeed, as the website stats.org
concluded: Being labeled a "crack baby" appears to have done more harm
to these children than the cocaine itself did.” Another stats.org
article on media meth myths is available here.
But it wasn’t just the babies who were stereotyped and stigmatized. We
were repeatedly told that crack was harder on children because of its
special appeal to women. We were told that crack was so addictive that
it stole these mothers’ material instinct. And we were told crack
addiction was virtually untreatable.
None of it was true.
The false claims were used as an all-purpose justification for soaring
numbers of foster care placements, by child welfare systems whose
response to every problem can be boiled down to “take the child and
run.” The label “crack addict” was thrown around with the same abandon
as the label “crack baby,” and the assumption was that, since there was
no hope for the mothers, the only alternative was foster-care for the
children. Any time anyone questioned the high rate at which children
were removed from their homes, the child welfare establishment blithely
labeled every case a “crack case” and insisted there was no choice.
None of it was true.
Indeed, by October 2004, Columbia Journalism Review had published an
article ending with a plea to journalists not to make the same mistakes
with “meth” as they made with crack. But, it seems, few reporters
listened. One need only substitute “crack” for “meth” and the recent
crop of stories sound identical to their counterparts from the 1980s.
If anything, the term used for children this time is even more
insidious: To call a child a “meth orphan” writes off both the child and
his or her parents.

The problem is real, the solutions have been phony

There is something else that addiction to crack and meth have in
common: Both are very serious, very real problems. Addiction to either
substance requires intervention to ensure that children are safe. The
issue is how to intervene. Sometimes there truly is no choice but to
remove the children and place them in foster care. In other cases,
children can be placed with extended family members. But in many other
cases, there is another option that should be tried first: drug
treatment, including inpatient programs where parents can remain with
their children.

Meth addiction is treatable

A review of the literature by Prof. Richard Rawson, Associate Director
of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at UCLA’s David Geffen School of
Medicine, concludes that addiction to methamphetamine is just as
treatable as addiction to cocaine. Furthermore, it takes no longer to
treat meth addiction than to treat any other drug addiction.
And Dr. Rawson is not alone in his assessment.
His assessment that meth is just as treatable and takes no longer to
treat is confirmed by a Washington State study. The title says it all:
Treatment for Methamphetamine Dependency is as Effective as Treatment
for Any Other Drug. (If clicking on this link leads to a password
request, click “cancel” and you’ll still be able to see the document).
According to a letter signed by 93 medical doctors, scientists,
researchers in psychology and treatment specialists:
“[C]laims that methamphetamine users are virtually untreatable with
small recovery rates lack foundation in medical research. Analysis of
dropout, retention in treatment and re-incarceration rates and other
measures of outcome, in several recent studies indicate that
methamphetamine users respond in an equivalent manner as individuals
admitted for other drug abuse problems. Research also suggests the need
to improve and expand treatment offered to methamphetamine users.”
Further evidence comes from a county often identified in media accounts
as hard-hit by meth, Sacramento County, California. According to the
federal government’s National Center on Substance Abuse and Child
Welfare, the county developed a comprehensive approach to such cases,
emphasizing treatment. Between 1998 and 2004, the number of children
taken from their parents actually has declined by more than one-third.
The emphasis on treatment has reduced the length of time in foster care
for children who must be removed from their homes. And the county
actually is getting better treatment results for parents addicted to
meth than for those using cocaine or heroin.
The notion that there is no point in trying drug treatment in meth
cases because it won’t work or it takes too long is one more meth myth.

Why bother with treatment?

But why bother? Why bother helping a parent who is addicted to meth?
Here again, there are lessons from crack.
University of Florida researchers studied two groups of infants born
with cocaine in their systems. One group was placed in foster care, the
other with birth mothers able to care for them. After six months, the
babies were tested using all the usual measures of infant development:
rolling over, sitting up, reaching out. Consistently, the children
placed with their birth mothers did better. For the foster children,
being taken from their mothers was more toxic than the cocaine.
Still another study looked at foster care “alumni.” Among the conclusions:
· Alumni of foster care suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at a rate
more than double the rate for Gulf War Veterans.
· At least one-third said they were abused by a foster parent or another
adult in a foster home. (The study didn’t even ask about one of the
most common sources of abuse in foster care, foster children abusing
each other, so the real figure almost certainly is higher).
· Only 20 percent of the alumni could be said to be doing well. (For
more on this study, see NCCPR’s analysis, 80 Percent Failure, available
at www.nccpr.org.)
It is extremely difficult to take a swing at “bad mothers” without the
blow landing on their children. If we really believe all the rhetoric
about putting the needs of children first, then we need to put those
needs ahead of everything – including how we may feel about their
parents. That doesn’t mean we can simply leave children with addicts.
It does mean that drug treatment for the parent is almost always a
better first choice than foster care for the child -- because it is
urgent to save children from people in the grip of another addiction: an
addiction to foster care so powerful that they would throw children far
too easily into a system that churns out walking wounded four times out
of five.

Statistics abuse

Estimates of the number of cases in which drugs in general or any drug
in particular are “involved” in child welfare cases are just guesses – a
caseworker checks a box on a form because she thinks maybe there are
drugs involved in some way; a supervisor guesses how often that box has
been checked on the form, the p.r. person for the child welfare agency
guesses how often supervisors have told him they’re seeing the box
checked on the form. And everyone has an incentive to guess high –
since it’s considered an automatic justification for tearing a child
from everyone loving and familiar.
It’s no wonder that estimates for the proportion of cases involving any
drug, range from 20 percent to 90 percent.
The term “involved” contributes to the hype.
Consider a case profiled in a thoughtful, careful way by the Portland
Oregonian. The mother used meth, but was in outpatient treatment and
doing well. The father was not accused of drug use at all. The child
was in foster care because there was no inpatient drug treatment
facility in the local community for the mother, and because of child
welfare systems’ pervasive bias against fathers.
Yet, for statistical purposes, this is a “meth case.” And when child
welfare agencies claim that a huge percentage of their cases “involve”
meth use, that includes cases like this one.
The problem is compounded when organizations lobbying for more funding
get into the mix. Many news accounts still accept at face value a
stacked-deck survey from the National Association of Counties. Among
the claims repeated over and over again: 71 percent of the counties
surveyed in California reported an increase in foster care because of
meth. But only reporters who looked at the fine print would discover
that only seven of California’s 58 counties were surveyed.

But what about the labs?

Unlike crack cocaine, methamphetamine can be manufactured in home labs
– and almost every news account emphasizes the labs and children taken
from those labs. But such cases represent only a tiny fraction of “meth
cases.”
Between 2000 and 2003, child protective services agencies removed
children from their parents 1,188,000 times. During that same time
period, 10,580 children were found to be “affected” by methamphetamine
manufacture, with 4,662 living in labs and 2,881 of them placed in
foster care. (Many of the others probably were placed informally with
relatives).
In other words, of all the entries into foster care from 2000 to 2003,
at least 99.1 percent of them had nothing to do with meth labs.
Even in Oregon, the substance abuse program manager for the state child
welfare agency says that “…the number of times that [child protective]
workers confronted actual manufacturing was rare in their practice
compared to the number of families affected by methamphetamine abuse and
dependence.”

Some states respond better than others

Oregon is one state that has been hard hit by meth. But,
unfortunately, like other states, such as Iowa and Colorado, Oregon also
is a state addicted to excuses.
· Oregon took away children, proportionately, at one of the highest
rates in the country as far back as 1985. Why were so many children
being taken then, long before any “meth epidemic”?
· Oregon, Iowa, and Colorado all take away children at a rate
significantly higher than California – long another state known for
having a serious meth problem.
· Alabama has a serious meth problem – and it’s had an impact on the
foster care population, with increases in removals in recent years. But
before meth hit, Alabama was hit by a class-action lawsuit requiring the
state to thoroughly reform its system to emphasize family preservation.
As a result, Alabama gained years of experience in safely keeping
children out of foster care, making it better able to handle the influx
of meth cases. So today, despite meth, Alabama still takes away
children at one of the lowest rates in the nation. At the same time,
re-abuse of children left in their own homes has been cut by 60 percent
– to less than half the national average – and, an independent court
monitor has found that, as a result of the reforms, child safety has
improved.
· Illinois also has a meth problem. Yet Illinois removes children at a
rate even lower than Alabama, and, again, independent court-appointed
monitors say as foster care has been reduced, child safety has improved.
And as noted above, by emphasizing treatment, Sacramento County,
California has been able to cope with a serious meth problem while
reducing entries into foster care.
A good child welfare system does such a good job of keeping other
children safely in their own homes, that when a new drug becomes the
scourge of the state, the system can handle it.

A political agenda

Hysteria over drugs has always been fueled by those with a vested
interest in taking away children, and the current wave of meth stories
is no exception.
In part, there is a political motivation behind the false claims about
meth. The federal government wants to allow states to use billions of
dollars now reserved for foster care for various prevention programs,
including drug treatment. But the child welfare establishment wants to
hoard the money for foster care.
Not only can this money be used only for foster care, the funding is
fueled by child removal. For every eligible child they put into foster
care, states get from 50 to 83 cents back on the dollar for foster care
costs.
The child welfare establishment wants us to believe that
methamphetamine is virtually untreatable because they want us to believe
the only option for the children is foster care. They want us to
believe the only option is foster care in order to justify their demand
that those billions of dollars be reserved for foster care, and nothing
else.
Indeed, the campaign against making foster care funding flexible has
been led by the Child Welfare League of America, the trade association
for public and private agencies. Most private agencies are paid for each
day they hold a child in foster care. Anything that threatens to close
the “open spigot” of federal foster care aid threatens the ability of
states to keep doling out per diem payments to private agencies for
endless foster care. That threatens the private agencies’ existence.
And that’s why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is
neither meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction
problem in child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private
child welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are
addicted to their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they’re putting their addiction ahead of the children.
Updated, June 10, 2006


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

0:-] wrote:
On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 22:26:28 -0400, Lester Dolt
wrote:

0:-] wrote:
On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 19:58:12 -0400, Lester Dolt
wrote:

...very old news, krp....

This "study" founders on the claim that children in foster care did
less well than children with their own druggie mothers.

Find the study. Look carefully at it. Note the support system
provided. NOTHING like the foster parents had.

The mother had NO other responsibilites, likely homemaker services,
(common to pilot programs).

The ask youself, if this was such a successful program why did the
state simply NOT do it everywhere in the state?

Money, child.

I was HUGELY expensive was was specially funded for research...NOT
REAL LIFE.

The could not sell it to the lawmakers, or the public.

This is a common pattern.

Every worker in the country, that is new and unseasoned politically
was drooling over this program, and couldn't wait to get their cocaine
using mothers into it.

The old timers, and I've watched CPS closely since 1976, just smiled
at the new kids, knowing they'd learn political reality the hard
way....just as it should be learned.

Yer a liar, child, because you KNOW these things.

And you still try to sell bogus reseach.

I don't care how many "experts" claimed cocaine wasn't that bad, etc.
blah blah blah. I knew a whole SLEW of medical foster moms, most
retired pediatric nurses.

They told and SHOWED me the horror show of addicted and drug effected
babies.

You what what is totally phony about this study?

The most carefully screened the test group for COCAINE USING ONLY
mothers.

Ask any worker from those days how many coke only users they had in
their caseloads.

The same, dumbo, is true of meth. Folks that do meth don't just do
meth.

And the test groups for THAT so called study and survey, were very
likely finely screened.

You don't get relevant data if you try to test a demographic that has
untold variations of MULTIPLE DRUG USE MIXING ON SCHEDULES IT'S
IMPOSSIBLE TO GET ACCURATE INFORMATION FROM THE USER ABOUT.

It's were the rubber hits the road that matters. What do treatment
people actually see?

In meth addiction one hell of a lot of psychotic patients. They make
POOR test subjects.

And meth psychosis is just a tad different than those associated with
other drugs. The patient is almost every time, HOMICIDALLY dangers,
as well as being an extremely high risk for escaping the program.

You are either eating propaganda inadvertantly and vomiting it up like
you love the taste and want more, or you KNOW their are liars in this
"professional" field, and IT'S ALL POLITICAL, dummy.


And that’s why the biggest addiction problem in child welfare is neither
meth nor crack nor any other drug. The biggest addiction problem in
child welfare is great big, prestigious, mainstream private child
welfare agencies with blue-chip boards of directors that are addicted to
their per diem payments for holding children in foster care.
And they’re putting their addiction ahead of the children.
Bull****. Stop blaming CPS then. You just included my own FAVORITE
blame group for the problem, just one down from pinnacle for blame.

At the top are the legislators that allow themselves to be lobbied by
those listed about, an go for the gold by passing into law schemes to
enrich their buddies.

And scummyboy, it is NOT limited to any one special government
program.

You never debated honestly before, and you aren't doing so now.

Because you are a liar, a congenital one. Compulsively addicted
yourself to the lie that serves your sick agenda of vengence.

How long ago was it you lost your children again?

Kinda like you - huh Kane/Don/d'geezer?? lol.
No, kinda like YOU, a sick **** that can't get over he was an abusive
violent and child raping incest freak and the state saved his children
from him. 0:]
WTF are you talking about?

That you are a convicted incestuous child molester, violent,
dangerous, and only recently out on parole.

Anything else?

Ah, yeah. Last post you publicly identified me as 'krp' a poster named
Ken Pangborn. And now you are saying I, Ken Pangborn, am a dangerous
child abuser out on parole.

I think you are wrong sweetboy. I think your big mouth is full of foot.

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com