President Trump recently announced new steps the administration will be taking on opioid policy, including a focus on reducing the supply of illicit drugs and improved prevention and treatment efforts. Millions of Americans are estimated to have substance abuse disorders, with over 100 people dying each day from opioid overdoses. From 2016-2017, emergency visits for opioid overdoses increased 30 percent across America, despite decreasing prescription rates. The Midwest experienced the largest increase in overdoses at 70 percent. In Wisconsin, overdoses increased by 109 percent.
We may not always think of children when we think of this, but they are a voiceless population that bears some of the worst repercussions of the opioid epidemic. The number of kids in foster care has grown 10 percent nationwide since 2012, but in some states foster care has grown by 50 to 100 percent. In 2016, there were 440,000 kids in care, with about 120,000 waiting to be adopted.
Parental drug abuse reportedly played a role in at least a third of cases where children were removed from their homes in 2016. Some counties and states estimate that opioids are involved in up to 80 percent or more of removals in their area.
A recent report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty shows a strong relationship between opioid dependency and the rate of children entering care, including a significant relationship between babies born addicted to drugs or alcohol and the share of children age 0-1 in care. The rate of babies born addicted to drugs or alcohol has skyrocketed in the United States, increasing as much as fivefold between 2000 and 2012. Their first few weeks of life are spent going through withdrawal.
Children less than a year old made up 18 percent of foster care entries in the United States in 2016, almost 50,000 kids, more than double the size of any other age group entering care. This is up from 16 percent in 2012. This two percentage point change represents 8,000 more infants taken annually from their homes and placed in care.
The federal government has announced millions in grants to states over the past year, to help reduce opioid abuse and strengthen families. Only a few months ago, the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis released a 138-page collection of recommendations. One was for the federal government to share best practices with states on ways to keep families affected by the drug crisis together, as well as research promising strategies for pregnant and postpartum women with substance abuse disorders and their babies.
It’s not clear yet how the Trump administration will move forward with that recommendation, but it is clear that it is up to states and communities to take the lead on caring for their neighbors.
States are implementing pilot programs and new policies to strengthen families and provide stability and loving, safe homes for foster children. But weaknesses in child welfare programs across the country have been magnified by the influx of children from the opioid crisis and this is just the beginning of much-needed improvements to outdated systems.
A few promising suggestions from advocates include private partnerships with child welfare agencies to help modernize archaic systems. Also, more sophisticated data collection might allow agencies to target problems more precisely with their interventions. Another possibility is legislation that expedites the permanency process for addicted babies in the child welfare system so they can be reunited with their parents or placed in an adoptive home quickly.
According to a study that analyzed the 34 states with sufficient data, foster care capacity decreased in at least half of the states in the United States between 2012 and 2017. One way to help improve capacity building would be for states to engage more broadly in “credit transfer” of foster care training and experience when foster parents move.
Streamlining the re-licensing process for foster parents when they switch states would help them get plugged into strained child welfare systems faster and encourage them to continue fostering. Additionally, the importance of religious agencies and organizations in shouldering new caseloads and wrapping services around struggling families cannot be overstated. Cities and states should seek to fully utilize those local networks of support. Consider the contrast between this practical advice and the decision by Philadelphia to stop working with two faith-based child welfare agencies while simultaneously issuing a call for 300 new foster families.
From small rural towns to sprawling suburbs and cities laced with drug routes, people are trying to keep their child welfare systems afloat as more children pour through their doors. While efforts that surround the addicted parents of children in care are valuable, and hopefully in time will help reduce the number of families torn apart, more needs to be done now for the thousands of children of the opioid crisis.
The role of the federal government is critical in turning the tide against opioid addiction. But the administration can be most effective by empowering communities and civil society. Local leaders are best positioned to take on the challenges their citizens, especially children, face and find solutions sensitive to their local needs.
Natalie Goodnow is a research fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty.
