The Minneapolis Star Tribune
LITTLE FALLS, Minn. (AP) -- The problems of methamphetamine users are bad enough. But what to do with their children, rescued from a nightmare of paranoid, strung-out parents, sometimes found amid chemicals so toxic they must be hosed down before they are taken to a foster home?
In Grant County this year, authorities permanently took a baby away from a mother who got so paranoid from taking methamphetamine that she stole a car and fled town, leaving the infant alone in their freezing apartment.
A group of Minnesota social workers, county attorneys and other professionals who gathered for a conference on Monday in Little Falls are bracing themselves for more cases like that.
Authorities tracking meth arrests in Minnesota in recent years say that children have been present in at least 30 percent of the cases, with the figure reaching as high as 50 percent in some years.
“Could there be a more traumatic experience for a child?” asked Esther Wattenberg a professor at the University of Minnesota’s centers for Urban and Regional Affairs and Advanced Studies in Child Welfare. She was among the organizers of the conference on “Children in a Meth-Endangered Environment.”
Wattenberg said that rural counties, where incomes are lower and meth is easier to make without being noticed, have seen sharp increases in cases where children need protective services because their parents are addicted or are cooking the drug at home to sell.
Meth was a factor in 31 percent to 81 percent of child-protection cases reported in a recent survey of counties, she said.
Unfortunately, Wattenberg said, there’s no statewide procedure for safely dealing with meth-endangered children, and local governments may not be able to handle the spikes in expensive care for children whose parents go to prison or fail to recover.
“Talk about a drug from Hell,” Wattenberg said. “Its seductive features are attractive to young families with low incomes and a lot of stress, but there’s an extraordinary cost for all who touch it.”
The emotional trauma of seeing parents self-destruct and get hauled away is only one of many menaces of meth to children, Dr. Barbara Knox, a Mayo Clinic pediatrician, told the group:
_In two Colorado cases, babies died when their strung-out mothers mistakenly fed them from bottles in which they’d refrigerated liquid meth next to other baby bottles.
_Chemicals used to make meth have burned children’s hands and faces and put them at risk for organ and brain damage, respiratory ailments and other problems. “We are seeing cases of acute hepatitis and acute kidney damage in children coming out of these meth-lab homes,” Knox said.
_Babies born to meth addicts have exhibited an array of problems. One had intestines outside its body. Others are premature and underdeveloped. Many are born addicted and are often inconsolable as they go through withdrawal. Once they’re older, some have difficulty expressing themselves.
_Children living in homes where meth is made are subjected to unimaginable filth. Police in the Rochester area pulled children from one home where vomit and human feces littered the carpet, and the carcass of the family dog, dead from neglect, was rotting amid piled garbage in the garage.
_Children are at risk of being injured by meth-cooking explosions, or by the guns and other weapons often kept by meth users.
_Children are often neglected for days by parents locked in a cycle of binge and sleep, with sometimes violent mood swings in between. The children fend for themselves, and older kids become like parents to younger ones.
Child protection workers at the conference said authorities statewide should adopt a a protocol for police, social workers, doctors, nurses and foster parents dealing with meth-endangered children.
Wattenberg said many more foster parents need training in dealing with children endangered or damaged by meth and other drugs.
Some local programs were held up as examples. They included a partnership between Mayo Clinic and Rochester-area authorities, and a support group Crow Wing County has for foster kids, many of whom were removed from homes where meth was being used or made.