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Deal Us In

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Diamonds

The Best Way To Support Children Is To Support Their Caregivers

Fund programs that offer families the support they need to remain intact, rather than removing children. Family separation disproportionately impacts Black and Brown families and has serious long-term consequences for children.*

The Best Way To Support Children Is To Support Their Caregivers

What You Need To Know

  • Research shows separating a child from their parent(s) has detrimental, long-term emotional and psychological consequences due to the trauma of removal itself and the unstable nature of, and high rates of abuse in, foster care. Nevertheless, the child welfare system errs on the side of removal and almost uniformly fails to consider the harms associated with that removal.

  • Over 50 percent of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before their eighteenth birthday (nearly double the rate of white children). Nearly 10 percent of Black children will be removed from their parents and placed into foster care (double the rate of white children). One in 41 Black children will have their relationship with their birth parent or parents legally terminated (more than double the rate of the general population).* 

  • Suspicion or knowledge of a parent using drugs or alcohol has become one of the most common justifications to investigate, and separate families. Between 2000 and 2019, the frequency with which parental alcohol or drug use was cited as a contributing factor for child removal more than doubled, from 18.5% to 38.9% nationwide.* 

  • Despite misleading and medically-misinformed stigma surrounding prenatal drug exposure or parents who use controlled substances, there is no reason to believe that a parent who uses drugs is more likely to abuse or neglect their child than one who does not.*

  • Eat, Sleep, Console (ESC) is an emerging best practice for treating neonatal abstinence syndrome. It prioritizes nonpharmacologic approaches to care, such as a low-stimulation environment, swaddling, skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding. ESC also encourages parental involvement in the care and assessment of their infants.

  • “Newborns cared for with ESC were medically ready for discharge approximately 6.7 days earlier and 63% less likely to receive medication as part of their treatment”. * 


Where to Go for More Information


Research

  • The source most often cited for the claim that drug use increases the likelihood of abuse is a self published report that was not subject to peer review: National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (CASA), No Safe Haven: Children of Substance-Abusing Parents (1999), http://www.casacolumbia.org/articlefiles/379-No%20Safe%20Haven.pdf. Its major publicized finding, that children whose parents abuse drugs and alcohol are three times more likely to be physically or sexually assaulted and more than four times more likely to be neglected than are children of parents who are not substance abusers, was based on what amounted to an opinion survey of people working in the child welfare field. Id. at ii. But not only did this survey fail to qualify as reliable scientific evidence, the report itself noted that those who were surveyed were the least qualified to draw conclusions about causation and associations because few had any training in issues concerning drug use and addiction. Id. at 5. Moreover, the appendix to the CASA Report acknowledged that it was not based on reliable data. Id. at 165. See also David J. Hanson, The Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse: A Center for Alcohol Statistics Abuse, http://alcoholfacts.org/CASAAlcoholStatisticsAbuse.html (challenging the quality and value of research from the Center and noting its refusal to submit its work to peer review).*

  • Eat, Sleep, Console Approach: A Family-Centered Model for the Treatment of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome

  • Eat, Sleep, Console Approach or Usual Care for Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal


Additional Resources

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