Pubdate: Sun, 9 Dec 2007
Source: Ventura County Star (CA)
Copyright: 2007 The E.W. Scripps Co.
Contact:  http://www.venturacountystar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/479
Author: Kathleen Wilson
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

PARENTS TRY TO PUT FAMILIES BACK TOGETHER AFTER METH USE

'It's Only Beginning'

As the child of a drug addict, Angela Coronado couldn't trust her 
mother to show up at school events or take her shopping.

"Our relationship was really nothing," said Angela, 17.

Her mom, Tina Benavente, began smoking methamphetamine heavily in the 
beginning of the decade and by 2002 was drifting on the streets 
trying desperately to score more of the drug. She took Angela and her 
two younger brothers to live in a motel room with their grandmother 
so they wouldn't be homeless with her. "I was so far gone into drug 
use, that's where most of my check was going," Benavente said.

Now, the single mom with a 10th-grade education is in recovery after 
spending a year in the Lighthouse Women and Children's Mission in 
Oxnard. Not only is she working at the shelter, but also the family 
moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Port Hueneme in May.

Authorities never removed the children from her custody, but meth 
stopped her from being a mother, she said.

"The relationship me and my kids could have had years ago, it's only 
beginning now," said Benavente, 35, who says she turned to drugs 
after the death of an infant son from meningitis.

"Doing that drug, you just don't care anymore. You don't care about 
anything at all."

Hundreds if not thousands of children in Ventura County share the 
same kind of life or worse, as their parents fall under the grip of 
the cheap stimulant.

An estimated 400 infants are born each year in Ventura County with 
prenatal exposure to the drug. Many more live in chaotic homes even 
if their meth-using mothers managed to abstain while pregnant. The 
drug is fueling abuse and neglect cases, rising foster care costs, 
and more placements of children with relatives and adoptive families. 
Of the 186 children social workers referred for court intervention 
from July 2006 to January of this year, 88 were at risk because of 
methamphetamine use in the household, according to a survey by the 
county's Human Services Agency.

'What I Judged, I Became'

Although neglect is more common than abuse, local prosecutors said 
they see dozens of cases in which children have sustained serious 
physical injuries from parents using meth. The drug can change the 
chemistry of the brain, causing parents to become paranoid, confused, 
irritated and violent.

Some injuries are life-altering. Last year, an 11-week-old Simi 
Valley girl was shaken and squeezed so hard by a father coming down 
from a meth high that she was blinded in one eye, suffered multiple 
rib fractures and probably has brain damage. The father, who had a 
previous history of abuse with a girlfriend's child, was sentenced to 
10 years in prison.

But most cases are less dramatic, involving mothers such as Alma, who 
asked to have her last name withheld to protect her children's 
privacy. Alma said she barely saw her three sons while in the grip of 
methamphetamine. Relatives raised them as she stayed in motels and 
friends' homes, she said, "getting high and drinking."

She became pregnant again and used meth the entire nine months. Her 
daughter was born meth-exposed and was placed in foster care while 
Alma began getting treatment. Her daughter's birth prompted her to 
turn her life around: She is now clean and learning how to be a good 
parent, she said.

"Before I started using, I thought, how could you do that to your 
children," she said. "I will not judge anybody else again. What I 
judged, I became."

Unsafe Homes

Alma, 21, says her daughter is now doing well, but researchers say 
the long-term impact on meth-exposed children is still unknown. Nor 
is it easy to distinguish the effects of drug exposure from the 
overall effects of the troubled backgrounds from which many of these 
children come, often involving domestic violence, poverty, parental 
depression and homelessness.

Maria Rivas, 29, and Missael Palma, 24, are both former meth users 
struggling with a past laced with drugs and arguments bad enough to 
bring police to the door.

Last month, a judge removed Rivas' three daughters -- whom she says 
were not prenatally exposed -- from the couple's two-bedroom 
apartment in Ventura.

Rivas burst into tears afterward.

"I feel horrible," she said. "I feel like I have failed. I'm hoping 
for the best but expecting the worst. Having my kids removed is the worst."

The girls have been in foster care since then, but the court returned 
them to Rivas on Wednesday.

A week after the removal, Rivas and Palma split up as she focused her 
energy on getting the girls back. Rivas quit her college classes to 
enter a drug treatment program that also offers help with parenting skills.

Palma said the family first came to the attention of Child Protective 
Services when he pinched Angela, 3, on the arm a few months ago. When 
the child care center she attends reported a new bruise on her cheek, 
social workers took Angela and her older sisters, Ariana, 4, and Lucy, 8.

The girls blamed Palma, although their mother said she had bitten 
Angela playfully, causing the injury. The judge did not buy that 
explanation, Rivas said.

Palma, who is the father of two of the girls, blames meth for part of 
their problems.

"It stays on our record and our lives forever," he said.

Social workers can't remove children simply because the parents have 
a drug problem, but the addictions can lead to unsafe homes. The 
deeper the addiction, the more likely that children will be abused or 
chronically neglected.

"Some of the homes I have gone into have visible cockroaches on the 
floor, rodent feces, piles of dishes with rotting food on them," said 
Jennifer Atkinson, a county social worker who investigates 
complaints. "Sometimes police find drugs within access to the kids or 
the kids have access to weapons in the home."

Parents crashing after being up on meth for days, a time when they 
have no tolerance for a whiny 3-year-old, may strike their children. 
Other youngsters may break bones because of lack of supervision and 
then receive no medical attention because their parents don't take 
them to a doctor. They may not have current immunizations or regular 
physical checkups. Some have never seen a dentist.

Judge Tari Cody reviews 800 to 1,000 abuse and neglect cases annually 
in the dependency court in El Rio, where she decides whether the 
children should be removed from the home. Many parents are poor 
single mothers involved in abusive relationships, much like the ones 
they experienced in their own childhoods.

Under state and federal laws, they usually have a year or less to 
complete court-ordered programs to get the children back. They must 
attend parenting and anger management classes, undergo drug treatment 
and often receive mental-health counseling.

Atkinson said 77 percent of all Ventura County children removed from 
their homes last year were reunited with their parents within 12 
months. No separate analysis was available for meth-involved 
families, but Cody guessed that half of the meth-using parents whose 
children are removed get them back.

Some cannot seem to stop using meth, often because of mental illness, she said.

"They are told, If you can't stop, you will lose your child' and they 
can't stop. They can't stop."

Exposed in the Womb

Meth is the drug of choice for women, many of them mothers, who enter 
treatment in Ventura County and California. Almost 45 percent 
admitted to programs in the state named methamphetamine as the 
substance they were abusing, more than alcohol, heroin and marijuana 
combined. In county drug treatment programs for women who are 
pregnant or have children, as many as 85 percent have used meth. Many 
of these women become pregnant while on the drug, which is tied to 
weight loss, heightened sexual desire, lowered inhibitions and 
increased energy.

Bronwyn Redfern of Newbury Park says she carried two babies while using meth.

Redfern, 30, said she used meth off and on while carrying Jonathan, 
3. Her daughter, Olivia, 2, was exposed during the first six months.

Olivia is doing well, but Jonathan is so aggressive that Redfern says 
she hates to take him outside.

"He has episodes everywhere we go," she said. "I don't even want to 
go to the grocery store."

Redfern said she turned to meth at 21, when she was grieving the 
death of her father. She described taking the drug just to get 
through the day at a time when she was disabled by depression.

She always thought she would quit if she got pregnant but could not, she said.

"It's easy to say something, but when you're in the situation, you 
make different choices," she said. "I was an emotional wreck my whole 
pregnancy with him because of the guilt."

She is now receiving treatment through a county program called A New 
Start for Moms.

The outpatient program blends child care, parenting instruction and 
treatment; it is exclusively for pregnant women or mothers with 
substance-abuse problems.

Redfern also is taking part in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy, a 
program offered through Casa Pacifica, a nonprofit agency near Camarillo.

Both she and the children's father, Oscar Rodriguez, are learning how 
to forge a stronger relationship with Jonathan through a system 
developed for children with serious behavior problems. Using play 
exercises, a social worker guides them through the 20-week program, 
which is designed to help them bond with their son and then get him 
to follow directions without physical discipline.

The couple met at Narcotics Anonymous and have been together for six 
years. Both say that even when they were using, they kept their 
children fed and clothed, but they believe they can provide a better 
home environment now that they're sober.

"I'm hoping he's going to have a good future, but it's up to us," Redfern said.

Rodriguez, 30, says the therapy is working with his son. The retail 
manager has already lost one family to meth.

He had two sons, a job, a house, a boat, a motorcycle and a pastime 
coaching Little League in the Palm Springs area, he said. But that 
all changed nine years ago when life began revolving around the drug.

"It took three years from the day I (first) used to ruin everything 
in my life," said Rodriguez, who has not seen his sons from that 
relationship for two years.

Long-Term Effects

The surging use of the drug is coming at a time when scientists don't 
really know how meth-exposed children will do in life.

A large study launched three years ago is following 415 children in 
four states, including California, but its final conclusions have not 
been released.

So far, the children in the study have exhibited no major damage, 
such as brain lesions or heart defects, said Barry Lester, a 
prominent researcher in the field. They were, however, slightly 
underweight and smaller than normal for the number of weeks of pregnancy.

Lester says some meth-exposed children have symptoms similar to 
babies exposed to cocaine: They're jittery, have tremors and tight 
muscle tone. Doctors and therapists say these youngsters also have 
trouble paying attention and regulating their behavior.

It's too soon to know if the children in the study, who are now 
turning 3, will end up with the kind of learning problems that 
cocaine-exposed babies have shown, said Lester, director of the Brown 
University Center for the Study of Children at Risk.

"It is very possible that meth, like cocaine, affects areas of the 
brain that are in a sense not online yet until kids get to school," he said.

By age 7, cocaine-exposed babies showed a slight lag in IQ as well as 
poor behavior, trouble controlling themselves and hyperactivity.

"Those are the kind of behaviors that lead kids to experiment with 
drugs in adolescence," Lester said.

Health officials say meth is producing higher costs for taxpayers as 
well as for families. It is already pumping up demands for services 
such as physical therapy, occupational therapy and foster care.

School officials say they don't know whether it's pushing up special 
education enrollment as well. Two categories that might reflect meth 
exposure present conflicting data: The number of children with 
learning disabilities is falling, while those being diagnosed with 
attention deficit disorders is rising.

Breaking the Cycle

There are some promising strategies afoot. About 7,000 pregnant 
mothers in the county's public medical system have been screened for 
drug and alcohol use, an effort pediatrician Paul Russell hopes to 
expand to the private sector. The hope is that doctors will be able 
to persuade more mothers to stop.

For those already affected, a court program catering to mothers of 
drug-exposed infants has shown high success rates. Two-thirds of 
those complete the program, freeing the family from court 
supervision. These moms are allowed to enter residential treatment 
with their infants, where they receive counseling and parenting education.

"The choice is between this and having the child go into foster 
care," said Susan Feldman, a social worker assigned to Ventura 
County's drug court for mothers giving birth to drug-exposed babies. 
"That's a huge motivation for a lot of women."

Some counties are doing more, officials said.

A model program in Sacramento County provides what amounts to a 
"personal trainer" for substance-abusing mothers and fathers when a 
child is removed from the home.

"Ventura does quite a good job on screening and access for pregnant 
women," said Nancy Young, who testified before the U.S. Senate on the 
impact of methamphetamine on child-abuse caseloads. "What's different 
in Sacramento is that both father and mother receive intensive 
services and priority for treatment."

The available data do not show whether Sacramento County gets better 
results than Ventura County, where judges, social workers, counselors 
and public health nurses collaborate to help repair families.

But the director of a program in Sacramento that coordinates 
treatment for substance-abusing parents says its system has saved 
millions in foster care costs and more than doubled the rate at which 
families are reunified.

'It's A Nasty, Horrible Drug'

Those who complete the program re-offend at a rate of just 1 percent 
to 2 percent, said Sanford Robinson, director of Specialized 
Treatment and Recovery Services.

He said California needs to do more in both prevention and treatment 
to protect children. "It's a drug tailor-made to create child abuse," 
he said. "It causes you to stay up for days at a time; it puts you on 
edge. It's a nasty, horrible drug."

Across the state, many treatment programs focus on stopping the 
passage of drug habits from one generation to the next so that 
families can stay whole. So far, Benavente says her children seem to 
be avoiding perpetuating her family's long history with drugs.

Her daughter, who says she found her mother's meth pipes when she was 
still in elementary school, agreed.

"Everyone is getting sober now," Angela Coronado said. "Everything is 
getting to the way it should be." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake