Can I Keep My Baby Niece From Her Mother if She's Using Drugs and Homeless

Cheyenne Easter turned up on the riverbed nether the 22 freeway in the winter of 2016, shortly after her latest DUI.

Jeremy Jones was already living at that place, in a tent, with a pit bull named Haley. He idea Easter was beautiful.

Jones' drug of selection was vodka. Easter's was meth, which she used to stay awake in the wee hours; a homeless woman's strategy to fend off rapists.

There were lots of people camping ground under the 22 that get-go night, all abuzz over the new girl. Jones — non a large guy, sometimes bullied — would need his wits to pry her away from the crowd and become to know her better. Then rather than alcohol or drugs, Jones offered a Dr. Pepper and some gummy worms, and asked if she'd join him for a walk with Haley.

Easter loved dogs, and gummy worms, so she jumped up to join him. They strolled the riverbed, wandered onto the grounds of the nearby golf grade and shared the sorrows that had brought them to this detail moment.

And then the automatic sprinklers sprang to life, catching them in the crossfire. But rather than running for encompass, Easter grabbed the domestic dog's paws and danced, twirling in an improvised waltz as she implored God – and Mickey Mouse – to deliver her a happily-always-after.

Jones watched with trepidation.

"I was like, 'Oh, you're crazy,' " he said. "'Yous're crazy.' "

By the summer of 2018, Easter and Jones would have two children.

Each time she learned she was meaning, Easter said, she stopped using drugs. But betwixt pregnancies, she and Jones used again. Both babies would be swept into California's vast child protective organization.

Easter and Jones were left to wrestle with their demons – and California'southward kid welfare organization – hellbent on getting their children dorsum.

The system'due south job is to wrap kids in its protective arms, get their parents the assistance they need to be successful moms and dads, and go on families together.

Indeed, the number of kids in California'due south kid protection system care plunged almost 50 percent between 2000 and 2018. The number of children waiting for adoption subsequently their parents' rights was severed was down about 40 pct. But the number of infants (12 months or younger) in the organization shot up more 9 percent.

The help provided to parents struggling with addiction varies from county to county, judge to judge and fifty-fifty case to example. Likewise, parents vary in their willingness to take the help offered and practise the challenging piece of work that sobriety requires.

On their dizzying journey, Easter and Jones repeatedly leaned on a nonprofit that helps the homeless, the Illumination Foundation, for support.

But they also learned that if they actually wanted that happily-ever-later on, they had to create information technology themselves.

'But, y'all're using heroin'

Dr. Bryan Oshiro leaned close to the monitor, examining the ghostly, three-dimensional face of an unborn fetus. It was about five months old.

"There are so many things that can get wrong," he said, his voice echoing through the darkened examining room.

Oshiro is an obstetrician-gynecologist at Riverside Academy Health System-Medical Center who specializes in treating pregnant women who accept drug issues. Well-nigh of his patients use multiple drugs, from meth to alcohol to heroin, he said.

Once they realize they're pregnant – a discovery ofttimes delayed considering drug utilize can disrupt the menstrual bicycle – their universe tin can crystallize with a violent clarity. Unable or unwilling to get make clean for themselves, many find a steely resolve to get clean for their babies.

Oshiro examined the ultrasound. Drug employ during pregnancy can lead to miscarriage, seizures, premature membrane ruptures and separation of the placental lining from the uterus, likewise as difficult deliveries, premature births, underweight babies, and a host of other ills.

So he scanned the phantasmal images of the upper jaw, lower jaw, spine, hips, heart, liver, kidneys, nodding at what he saw. With this fetus, everything appeared to exist forming correctly.

To bolster the opioid-using women's newfound resolve to get clean, Oshiro tells them about medication-assisted treatment. Buprenorphine – the gold standard for treating opioid addiction – blocks cravings and allows them to get on with their lives, much like methadone only without the daily visit to a clinic. Only 3 doctors in Moreno Valley currently accept permission from the federal government to prescribe buprenorphine, and Oshiro is i of them.

He ticks off the benefits of medication-assisted handling: Their babies are half as likely to experience withdrawal symptoms. After delivery, moms become the benefit of the doubt from the child protection system, then their babies aren't taken abroad. They're encouraged to breastfeed. They become help learning, and practicing, how to be a parent.

And, if needed, doctors and nurses and therapists will let dependency court know how hard the moms are working to stay sober.

Still, women frequently snub buprenorphine, insisting they don't want to expose their babe to drugs.

"But, you're using heroin," Oshiro counters.

They often don't – or won't – comprehend the difficulty of the chore before them.

'Adieu. Forever.'

In a nondescript conference room in an industrial park near the 22 freeway, 5 women – 4 of them meaning and one whose three children were in protective custody – sat effectually a long table.

One of those women, Jen R., began reading aloud the bye letter she'd written to her drug of pick.

"Dear Methamphetamine…"

Jen was v months pregnant, living at the Casa Teresa emergency maternity shelter in Orange and getting counseling and educational services hither, at the nearby Mariposa Center.

The counselor at Mariposa, Sylvia Jacques, tilted her head sympathetically to one side, silently encouraging her to continue.

"I thought we were going to be together forever," Jen read. "Just you're no good for me. So cheerio. Forever."

Jacques beamed. She knew Jen was tired; that she wanted to take a break and grab a smoke. Yet, Jacques pressed.

Jen'due south time at Casa was hitting turbulence. She was argumentative, endangering her spot in a refuge that grants women months of rubber shelter and assistance, plus months of aid later their babies are built-in.

"Why do y'all call up you have this impulse to sabotage yourself?" Jacques asked.

Jen's face crumpled.

"I demolition things because I don't feel like I deserve expert things," she said. "I don't think I deserve all this goodness. I don't call up I deserve to have this babe."

In one case, she sold drugs. People got hurt; some wound up expressionless. That past haunted her.

"That'due south the old yous," Jacques said softly. "Give yourself a chance."

Don't call the regime, even so

The women say they quit using drugs the second they realized they were significant – merely often that's five or half-dozen months in. It'southward a fairly common scenario, officials said, and it can lead to its own complications.

Babies exposed to drugs in the early on, critical months of their development might develop learning difficulties and behavioral problems. If their moms stop using, neither baby nor mom will test "pos-tox' at birth – thus escaping the watchful eyes of authorities but missing out on the early help that can make a vital difference in all their lives.

"Once they hitting preschool and kindergarten, these petty ones that are slipping through the cracks, their destiny can simply be and so sad," said Tammy Johnson, a neonatal intensive care nurse at Riverside University Health System Medical Eye.

Years later on, children are oft misdiagnosed with mental wellness disorders when they're really suffering from prenatal exposure to alcohol, cocaine or other drugs, according to the work of Ira J. Chasnoff, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the Academy of Illinois College of Medicine.

These bug are treatable and preventable with early intervention, Chasnoff found. But without universal screening, the need for such assist might not surface until information technology's likewise late.

"Thousands of children in California may be at a disadvantage for lack of that intervention," said nurse Johnson.

While laws in 23 states categorize drug use during pregnancy as a course of child abuse – and three states consider information technology grounds for civil commitment – California is not ane of them. Here, pregnant addicts are directed to medical help and treatment programs, but their participation is voluntary. Officials won't warning kid protective services about the female parent's problem unless other children, already in the woman's intendance, also are at risk.

"The way that (Child Protective Services) looks at things is, there'due south no child that needs to exist protected, because the child has non been born all the same," said Shawn Briggs, a licensed clinical social worker at Riverside University Health Organisation Medical Center.

When the baby arrives, and child protection officials are called, Briggs might suggest that a mom isn't quite fix to take her newborn home and that a temporary placement might give her breathing room to get a solid footing in her recovery. Becoming a new mom is stressful for the best-prepared women; struggling with addiction on top of that can atomic number 82 to danger for them both.

The state, notwithstanding, is under no obligation to follow that advice.

Recently, a mom who had lost iii children to the kid welfare system in Riverside County gave birth to a fourth, drug-exposed babe. Briggs had ii competing concerns: What if this is the infant that changes her? And what happens if she doesn't change at all? Canton kid protection officials immune the woman to take the infant domicile. In some ways, everyone now holds their breath.

"California is a reunification state," said Briggs. "That was embedded in me through my education procedure. They're ever going to piece of work towards reuniting families, because there's this conventionalities that that'due south better for the kid overall.

"I don't always agree with that," she added.

"I don't see how nosotros tin can help moms be successful by allowing them to go home with infants when they have come in predisposed to drugs," Briggs said. "Mom hasn't had plenty make clean fourth dimension to be successful."

Jess Ann Hite, an chaser from the urban center of Orange who has been representing children in dependency court for 30 years, agrees.

"They come in with the best of intentions," Hite said of the parents. " 'I'm going to change.' And the realities are, considering of the habit, the drugs scream louder than the babies."

For child social workers, the two goals – protect the child; keep the family together – can exist in tragic conflict.

Deadly do good of the uncertainty?

Information technology'southward unclear how often the push to keep families together ends badly. Child welfare proceedings are secret and the involvement of Social Services is not always disclosed when parents face criminal charges.

Only some 3-quarters of kid deaths due to corruption and neglect tracked by the land of California – and some 60 percent of serious injuries – happened in families that had previous contact with the child welfare organization.

Examples of the system backfiring tin be horrific.

Maggie Jean Wortman'due south doctors knew she was a drug user. Court records bear witness she tested positive for methamphetamine when she was half dozen months pregnant.

On Oct. 15, 2010, Wortman, of Loleta, gave nascence to a son. Barely six weeks later, the babe was dead.

Wortman told police that she continued to fume meth "a couple of times a week" for several weeks subsequently the infant was born, even though she was nursing. In 2012, she pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter by passing a lethal dose of the drug to her babe through her breast milk. She was sentenced to 6 years in prison.

Baby Leo Holtz's parents had a history of drug utilize equally well, court records testify.

Chantil Kalagian and Colin Holz were on probation when authorities allowed them to take Leo home. On the morning of Sept. 18, 2017, the 10-month-old was snuggling in bed with his parents. His father had stashed some blue pills stashed in his shorts pocket — pills that were supposed to be oxycodone hydrochloride, an opioid with a high propensity for corruption — and some pills spilled out.

Baby Leo stuck some in his rima oris.

He was blueish and unresponsive when Kalagian and Holz woke up, and he was declared expressionless at Rady Children'due south Infirmary, according to an arrest warrant.

An dissection found fatal levels of fentanyl – a drug that's 50 to 100 times more than stiff than morphine, and xxx to l times more potent than heroin – in the baby'southward organisation. Prosecutors charged Holz and Kalagian with felony kid abuse. They have pleaded non guilty.

The wisdom of California's goal – keep families together even when parents struggle with addiction – is chosen into stark relief by such tragedies.

"There's tension between believing in recovery and seeing it in people'southward lives – millions of people who've gotten make clean and sober – and knowing the harm that's being done to children every day they become home to a house in which one or more caretakers is drug or alcohol dependent," said Sidney L. Gardner, president of Children and Family unit Futures.

"That's nine 1000000 kids nationwide. Lo and behold, those are the kids who end upward affected by special educational activity, delinquency, on the street, in trouble. Knowing that some parents become better, and some kids are deeply damaged…." Gardner'south voice trailed off.

"Nosotros demand to draw that line."

Into the arrangement

Homeless, using meth, living nether the 22 freeway near the Santa Ana River; Cheyenne Easter was five or so months along when she realized she was meaning.

Gobsmacked, she walked a couple of miles to Disneyland. "I was like, 'God, am I supposed to have a infant? What am I supposed to do?'"

Beseeching God – and Mickey Mouse – for her happily-always-after had become a ritual for Easter, so when the cheerful steel drums from "Nether the Ocean" blasted from the overhead speakers at Disneyland, she took notice. "Just await at the world around y'all/Correct here on the bounding main floor/Such wonderful things surround you/What more is you lookin' for?" Then came fantastical bits from "Alice in Wonderland."

"It was like, 'Hey, you're done with Wonderland. Now y'all're going back to reality,' " Easter said.

She broke her meth piping, cached it in the dirt and headed back to the tent she called home.

"I desire to be a mom," she said. "I felt in my heart that God was going to grant me a family."

That was April, 2017. Workers for the nonprofit Illumination Foundation made sure she got to her prenatal appointments and convinced Easter – and young man Jeremy Jones – that they didn't demand to be homeless anymore. Illumination helped them get into an apartment in Huntington Beach. Their son, Sebastian – named after the usher from "The Little Mermaid" – was born in August.

It was a crude transition. After living nether a motorway for so long, they'd talk "actually, actually, really loud – similar our hearing just went away," Easter said. "We started getting into arguments and the cops kept coming over – like, even if I asked him if he wants hot sauce on his eggs, we'd have like 20 cops in our firm."

They started using once again. In October 2017, Easter kicked Jones out of the house – only not before following him outside and hurling a few punches.

Someone called police force. She was arrested for domestic violence. Jones was too intoxicated to accept care of three-calendar month-old Sebastian, so the baby was taken into protective custody.

Staff writer Tony Saavedra contributed to this report.

[This story was originally published by The Orangish County Annals.]

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Source: https://centerforhealthjournalism.org/fellowships/projects/born-drugs-goal-keep-kids-parents-sometimes-s-dead-wrong

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