Meth Myths Impact on Child Welfare

NACO got caught at SPECIAL INTEREST LOBBYING using exaggeration!
News media normally quick to buy into it have become wary of NACO.

Kane wrote
Why don't you tell people what your investment is in this
conflict between Meth and other substance abuse?

Why haven't you detailed YOUR financial connection to this issue, Kane?

You lobbied for NACO and NACO got caught fibbing for FUNDING.

Are you an employee or a contractor to NACO?


Kane wrote
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.s...3b3809d2e808cf

Over the past year, since he first posted in Oct of 2005, I have
produced article and study in more than sufficient numbers to prove
that indeed, it is an epidemic in the classic public health
model...that is it is both growing and spreading.

In fact, even in other parts of the world they are experiencing the
same thing. SE Asia and Australia for instance. I've not even bothered
to post articles from there but they are increasing just as ours did.

The simple truth is the states are swamped with meth related cases in
ADDITION to the still existing ones of other drugs and alcohol problems

in child protection.

We can either ignore it, as Doug would seem to be saying here....and
NOT coming up with anything new...or we can understand this is
devastating children and families and do what we can to deal with that
devastation.

Those of you that have followed this issue know that to reprint this
old propaganda piece is nothing more than self serving disinformation
.... peddled once again.

He plays the war of the stats, which I've responded to previously.

It isn't a comparison, Doug, it's the scope of seriousness of this
sudden rising up of an old foe, "speed," and the impact IT is having.

Comparison is minimizing and denial, Doug, and you know it.

Why don't you tell people what your investment is in this conflict
between Meth and other substance abuse?

Or have you none?


Doug wrote
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.s...595d03722658fa

Article with REFERENCES
http://www.youthtoday.org/youthtoday...ry2_10_05.html

The Meth Epidemic: Hype vs. Reality

The facts about how the drug affects child welfare
and how agencies have coped.

By Martha Shirk

To even the most casual observer, the news media this summer gave the
impression that a methamphetamine epidemic has created a child abuse
problem
that is overwhelming the nation's child welfare system. Reports
suggested
that meth addicts are untreatable, that their children are irreparably
damaged and that child-welfare agencies all over the country are being
strained as never before.

"In every way, shape and form, this is the worst drug ever for child
welfare," Jay Wurscher, director of addiction services for Oregon's
child
welfare agency, told The New York Times.

"We have so many in foster care, we're running out of homes," Joy
Swing, a
child protective services agent in Clermont County, Ohio, told "NBC
Nightly
News."

While some child welfare agencies are struggling with growing caseloads
and
new challenges stemming from parental meth use, experts on meth
addiction
and child welfare say the recent coverage promulgated some myths: that
meth-related child abuse is worse than it is, that meth addicts are
harder
to treat than they are, and that the nation's child-welfare system is
overwhelmed, when many agencies are coping well.

Many experts worry that the recent reporting on meth's connection to
child
abuse may erode public support for drug treatment programs and
family-strengthening services that can keep children out of foster
care,
just as hyped reporting on crack cocaine did in the 1980s and '90s. In
July,
more than 90 leading physicians, scientists and treatment specialists
urged
that public policies on meth "be based on science, not presumption or
prejudice."

"We are concerned that policies based on false assumptions will result
in
punitive civil and child welfare interventions that are harmful to
women,
children and families, rather than in the ongoing research and
improvement
and provision of treatment services that are so clearly needed," said a

statement from the group, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.
One of the signatories was Dr. Ira Chasnoff, the pediatrician who
sounded
the alarm in 1985 about what the media came to call "crack babies."
Chasnoff
later said his research had been misinterpreted.

Meth is undeniably a nasty, dangerous drug, and a parent's addiction
can
place a child in harm's way. Some children need to go into foster care
for
their protection, and an upsurge in cases might overwhelm child welfare

agencies in some localities. But here are some facts that got lost in
the
recent coverage:

.. Despite claims that prenatal exposure to meth is creating a new class
of
disabled "meth babies," there is little research on long-term effects,
says
Barry Lester, director of the Brown University Center for the Study of
Children at Risk and the principal investigator for the first
large-scale,
long-term study of the prenatal effects of meth.

"I don't want us to make the same mistake with meth that was made with
cocaine," he says. "We don't know that meth-exposed babies are harmed,
and
if the meth effect is anything like the cocaine effect, it is mild and
treatable."

.. Meth addicts are as treatable as cocaine addicts, says Richard A.
Rawson,
associate director of the UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs.
Rawson
was the principal investigator for the Methamphetamine Treatment
Project,
the first large-scale, randomized clinical trial of eight types of
behavioral therapies for meth addiction.

.. Effective practice models exist for meth-related child abuse. "We
know how
to assess for child safety and risks, and those lessons and skills
should be
used with families across the spectrum of substance use, abuse and
dependence," says Nancy Young, director of Children and Family Futures
in
Irvine, Calif., which operates the National Center on Substance Abuse
and
Child Welfare for the federal government. "Those jurisdictions that
have put
effort into working across agency lines to address these issues seem
fairly
well prepared to work with families with methamphetamine use, abuse and

dependence."

.. The foster care system as a whole has not been overwhelmed by
meth-related
admissions. Nationally, the foster care population has declined every
year
since 1999, when it peaked at 570,000. (In 2003, the latest year for
which
national data are available, it was 523,000.)

Without recent national data, it's too soon to know whether increases
reported by some jurisdictions are localized aberrations or predictors
of
more widespread increases to come. Tellingly, in California and
Illinois,
among the few states to report statistics for 2004 and early 2005, the
foster care populations have continued to decline, despite entrenched
meth
problems in those states.

.. Meth is not even close to being the most abused drug. Nationally,
meth was
the drug of choice for only 7 percent of people who sought treatment in

2003, according to a federal database published by the U.S. Substance
Abuse
and Mental Health Services Administration.

Alcohol abuse accounted for almost 42 percent of treatment admissions,
opiates for almost 18 percent, marijuana for almost 16 percent and
cocaine
for almost 14 percent.

Behind the Scare
Many of the summer's meth stories were pegged to the release in July of

surveys of county law enforcement and child welfare officials that were

commissioned by the National Association of Counties (NACo). "Many
children
are being grossly neglected by their addicted parents, and these same
children are being exposed to the harmful side effects of the
production of
the drug, if they live in close proximity to a lab," the association
said in
a report on the surveys.


Most media accounts adopted NACo's alarmist tone, reporting that 40
percent
of child welfare officials claimed an increase in meth-related
out-of-home
placements in the past year. But that also means that 60 percent
reported no
increase.

News outlets also commonly reported that 71 percent of the responding
counties in California claimed an increase in meth-related out-of-home
placements, but didn't note that only seven of California's 58 counties
were
surveyed.

The survey seemed designed to provide context for the announcement
several
weeks later by NACo's new president, Bill Hansell of Umatilla County,
Ore.,
that one of his three initiatives would be to gain more federal funding
for
counties' meth-fighting efforts. The association backs four
meth-related
bills pending in Congress.

Also in July, Valerie Brown, a county supervisor from Sonoma County,
Calif.,
testified before Congress that the Bush administration's proposal to
eliminate $804 million from the Justice Assistance Grant Program would
jeopardize counties' meth enforcement, treatment and prevention
efforts. She
also expressed the association's opposition to the administration's
proposal
to transform foster care from open-ended entitlement to a capped
allocation.

"If the counties that are experiencing an increase in foster care
caseloads
because of methamphetamine use had been operating under a capped
allocation,
they would not have had the resources to respond quickly," she
testified
before the House subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy, and
human
resources.

Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child
Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va., believes that fear of losing the
foster care entitlement underlies much of the hyperbole about meth.
"That's
a huge threat to child welfare agencies that exist on endless per-diem
payments for endless foster care," says Wexler, who advocates for more
family preservation efforts and less use of foster care.

Michael Arsham, executive director of the Child Welfare Organizing
Project
in New York City, agrees. Annual admissions to foster care in New York
City
have fallen by one-third since 2000. Nevertheless, Arsham says, private

foster care agencies are pressing the city's child welfare agency to
maintain foster care slots in case there's an upsurge in parental meth
use.

"If they are concerned about the well-being of children, the questions
they
should be asking are whether there are effective treatment models that
have
been developed elsewhere in the country, or whether we should be
looking
more at kinship and guardian arrangements, " says Arsham, whose project
is a
partnership of parents and professionals dedicated to child welfare
reform.

Some Areas Hit Hard
To be sure, some child welfare agencies have good reason to be alarmed
by
meth.

Although meth abuse has been a problem in the West for years, it is
spreading to other regions, creating challenges for child welfare
systems
whose experience with substance abuse has been limited largely to
marijuana
and alcohol. Even a small upsurge in meth-related child abuse can have
a
disproportionately large impact in rural areas and small towns, where
substance treatment programs, social service providers and foster homes
are
scarce or stretched thin.

"We find that workers leave the agency because of personal risks, the
nature
of these cases and the challenges of working with these families,"
Freida
Baker, deputy director of Alabama Family and Children's Services, said
at
the House subcommittee hearing in July. "We find that an already
strained
child welfare work force of young, inexperienced staff is further
burdened
with the complex dynamics of crystal meth."

In Vigo County, Ind., which includes Terre Haute, a child-welfare
official
told the Louisville Courier-Journal this summer that about 70 percent
of
children entering foster care had parents who abused meth. In Oklahoma,

state officials say meth is a major reason that the foster care
population
is up 16 percent from a year ago. Even in relatively resource-rich
Tulsa,
The New York Times reported in July that siblings in child protection
cases
were forced to share beds in an emergency shelter because meth cases
had
pushed the shelter's population to double its licensed capacity.

Probably the major reason for the alarm over meth is that it can be
produced
in home kitchens, which may expose children - and abuse and neglect
investigators - to toxic chemicals and the risk of burns. From 2000 to
2003,
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says, eight children
died and
96 were injured through home meth production.

Because of the special dangers that meth production poses both to
children
and first responders such as police and child abuse investigators, the
White
House Office of National Drug Control Policy has pressed states and
counties
to establish multidisciplinary Drug Endangered Children (DEC) teams. So
far,
25 states or regions have established teams, and 5,500 professionals
from
law enforcement, child protection, public health and other public
agencies
have been trained, the drug control office says.

"Collaboration is the key to success," says Ronald Mullins, training
coordinator for the San Diego-based National Alliance for
Drug-Endangered
Children. "If you develop standardized protocols and make those
agreements
in your community, the children get the medical attention they need,
the
psychosocial attention they need and the placement they need."

The alliance's protocols allow only specially trained law-enforcement
officials to enter homes where meth is produced. Children must be
washed at
the site and immediately taken for medical examinations, including
tests for
exposure to chemicals.
Although the alliance's focus is on children threatened by meth
production,
the numbers are fairly low. Young, of the National Center on Substance
Abuse
and Child Welfare, says federal data show that from 2000 through 2003,
about
10,000 children were "affected" by meth manufacturing, including 4,662
who
lived in homes where meth was produced. Some 2,881 of them entered
foster
care, Young says - less than one-third of 1 percent of all the children
who
entered foster care during that same period.

Learning from Others
Rather than feeling overwhelmed, experts say, child welfare agencies
that
are experiencing increases in meth-related child abuse and neglect can
find
guidance from jurisdictions with experience.

Many social service agencies in California have been dealing with
meth-related abuse or neglect since the early 1990s and have learned
how to
intervene effectively. "Addiction is addiction," says Toni Moore,
administrator of the Alcohol and Drug Services Division for Sacramento
County, where more than half of those who enter treatment cite meth as
their
drug of choice. "Although there may be some difference in how you
approach
someone who uses meth and someone who uses cocaine, the basic problem
is
addiction."

UCLA researchers have found that traditional 12-step programs are not
as
effective with meth users as with marijuana and alcohol abusers, which
means
that treatment professionals may need additional training. Research has

shown that meth abusers respond similarly to behavioral and
cognitive-behavioral treatment strategies that work with cocaine
abusers,
says Rawson of UCLA.

The National Center on Substance Abuse and Child Welfare provides
technical
assistance to states and counties that are struggling with meth-related

child abuse. Young, the center's director, says the most effective
strategies include stationing staff with substance abuse expertise in
child
welfare offices and courts; giving parents who face abuse charges
priority
for treatment; using facilitators to help parents access treatment, and

setting up a dependency drug court to monitor parents' compliance with
treatment plans.

Because most mothers entering substance abuse treatment have
experienced
domestic violence and abuse or neglect as children, Young says, it's
important that they also get help for those problems. In addition, she
notes, "We learned during the cocaine epidemic that mothers in
treatment
with all of their children had the best outcomes."

The crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and early '90s produced lessons
that
many experts say are highly relevant today. Research has found that
most
problems that had initially been attributed to prenatal exposure to
crack
resulted from poverty, that a childhood spent in foster care can be
more
harmful than the parental behavior that prompted the child's removal,
and
that prenatally exposed infants who stay with their mothers achieve
developmental milestones earlier than those who go into foster care.

Says Lester, the Brown University researcher: "If we overreact to meth,
the
effect will be, as with cocaine, flooding an already overburdened
foster
care system, breaking up families and having kids bouncing around from
foster home to foster home during the first few years, when they need
to
develop strong attachment relationships. These children may wind up
with
behavior problems, not because of the drugs, but because they were
improperly socialized.
"We need to move toward more of an understanding of drug abuse as a
treatable mental health disease, not a crime against the child or
society."

Martha Shirk, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is an author and freelance
journalist specializing in child and family issues. .

A Model for Helping the Children of Drug Abusers

In Sacramento County, Calif., about 80 percent of child abuse cases
involve
parents with alcohol or drug problems, and more than half of these
parents
cite meth as their drug of choice. Nevertheless, child welfare workers
there
have trouble understanding why media reports say meth has paralyzed the

nation's child welfare system.

"We've got big meth issues in Sacramento County, but they're not
paralyzing
anybody," says Martha Haas, a program planner who has also worked as an

investigator, intake worker and supervisor during 10 years with the
county's
Child Protective Services division.

Sacramento County (population: 1.3 million) has been widely lauded for
developing effective interventions for families in which parents abuse
drugs
and abuse or neglect their children. The National Center on Addiction
and
Substance Abuse, the federal Treatment Improvement Exchange, the Child
Welfare League of America and the National Center on Substance Abuse
and
Child Welfare have all cited the county for implementing systems
changes
that have increased parents' access to treatment and decreased
children's
stays in foster care.

Here are the key elements to Sacramento's success:
More training, treatment: Meth abuse, along with alcohol and cocaine
abuse,
was already a big problem in 1994, when the county got a two-year,
$200,000
grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation to better serve children who
were
being abused or neglected by parents with drug or alcohol problems.

"We realized that alcohol and drug use were a major driving factor for
many
of our health and social problems, and we wanted to increase the
likelihood
that people who were abusing drugs and alcohol would get treatment,"
says
Toni Moore, who served as project director for the Alcohol and Other
Drug
Treatment Initiative.

The initiative began by providing intensive training in alcohol and
substance abuse assessment to child welfare workers, public health
nurses
and community service providers. Some 7,000 have been trained so far.
Then
the county gave treatment priority to parents with substance abuse
problems
who were involved with child protective services.

"If you don't have an organized system where you give some sort of
priority
to specific groups, it's typically going to be the most motivated
client who
gets in, or the one who knocks the loudest, and that may not be the one
who
needs it the most," explains Moore, administrator of the county's
Alcohol
and Drug Services Division.

Through a creative melding of funds from about a dozen federal and
state
programs, the county came up with $32 million a year for treatment.

Remove barriers: The county also added three early intervention
specialists
to make sure logistical problems don't keep parents from accessing
treatment. Two of them work in the courthouse. "When families come into
the
system, the service comes to them," Moore says. "That immediate linkage

happens."

Monitor progress: To help keep parents on track, the county got money
from
the state's tobacco litigation settlement to fund STARS (Specialized
Treatment and Recovery Services), which deploys recovery specialists -
some
of them recovered drug abusers - to monitor and support parents in
treatment. "I'm convinced that it's those relationships that families
build
with STARS workers that are crucial to success," says Haas of Child
Protective Services. "When parents are in crisis, it's the STARS worker
who
responds and motivates them."

Special court: In 2001, the county added the final element of its
cross-agency approach: a dependency drug court, which monitors the
treatment
progress of substance-abusing parents accused of abuse or neglect.
Parents
must appear there every month for at least three months to report on
their
treatment progress. In many other jurisdictions, they would be lucky to

reach the top of a waiting list for treatment in that amount of time.

"These hearings are something between a revival and an Alcoholics
Anonymous
meeting," says Laurie Slothower, a spokeswoman for the Sacramento
County
Department of Health and Human Services. "People show up in their best
suits, and they're crying and thanking their CPS worker and their case
manager. The judge tells them what a good job they're doing and gives
them
these little rocks that say 'Hope' or 'Faith.' Coming from a judge,
that
carries a lot of weight."

Results: Sacramento's approach is being evaluated by researchers at
Children
and Family Futures, a nonprofit policy research firm in Irvine, Calif.
So
far, the evaluation has found that 86 percent of parents referred to
Dependency Drug Court entered treatment, compared with about half of a
comparison group. Of those who entered treatment, two-thirds completed
it.
On average, their children spent far less time in out-of-home care than
the
comparison group.

Besides reunifying families more quickly, the evaluation found, the
strategy
saved the county nearly $3 million in out-of-home care costs over two
years.

"Our approach has made a difference in our families," Haas says. "I'm
hoping
that in a few more years, we'll see more families getting hooked up
with
services in their neighborhoods before their kids need to come into
care."

- Martha Shirk

Resources

Nancy Young, Director
Children and Family Futures
Irvine, Calif.
(714) 505-3525,

Richard A. Rawson, Associate Director
UCLA Integrated Substance Abuse Programs
Los Angeles
(310) 445-0874, ext. 311

Barry Lester, Director
Brown University Center for the Study of Children at Risk
Providence, R.I.
(401) 453-7640,
Toni Moore, Administrator
Alcohol and Drug Services Division
Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services
Sacramento, Calif.
(916) 875-2055
, www.sacdhhs.com
Meth Resources
Informational website sponsored by federal agencies.
www.MethResources.gov

Greegor wrote:
NACO got caught at SPECIAL INTEREST LOBBYING using exaggeration!
News media normally quick to buy into it have become wary of NACO.

Exaggeration????

Gee, that never happened before.

Greegor wrote:
NACO got caught at SPECIAL INTEREST LOBBYING using exaggeration!
News media normally quick to buy into it have become wary of NACO.

They have? The news media is now shy of exaggeration?

Are you sure about that and have some evidence that this is so?

Who said this, other than you?

By the way, YOU are a special interest lobbyist, Greg. Aren't you aware
of that?

So is Doug. So is Dan, Michael, myself, and everyone that's ever posted
here.

We all have special interests.

Have you seen one, even ONE attempt to deny the importance of
continuing dealing with the other substance abuse while asking for the
public to become aware of this one, meth?

Go ahead, post it.

I'd love to see this.

It's all HYPE from you and Doug and other minimizers of the meth
problem.

NO ONE, not even I, have minimized the other drugs and their problem,
Greg.

Though you and others have insinuated I have by pretending to claim
thanks that I ignore the differences in rates of use.

I note, just for the fun of it, that Doug made a big thing out of the
huge disparity between Marijauna use and meth use.

That does not strike you as just a tad disingenuous?

Like Boo compares to Speed as an addictive damaging drug?

I can't wait to see the aging comparison pics for "Chronic Marijauna
users" to compare with the ones I've seen for meth users.

Do Tee smokers lose their teeth, and become raving paranoids locked up
in wards for Marijauna Psychosis?

You do, of course, see my point here, do you not?

You LET yourself be lied to, Greg, by the clever little tricks Doug
plays with information and words.

Are you EVER going to grow up and go out on your own?

Or are you just going to replace Lisa with the taxpayers of Iowa's
money so you can continue to sit on your fat ass and make a fool of
yourself babbling in these newsgroups.

0:-]