The Child Trauma Academy
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 The Amazing Human Brain and Human Development Discover the hows and whys of the human brain, and gain a better understanding of brain functioning in maltreated children. |
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| Surviving Childhood: An Introduction to the Impact of Trauma Learn the physiological and psychological aspects of trauma, the effects of this trauma on our society, and how you can help. |
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| Bonding and Attachment in Maltreated Children |
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Article: Parental Drug Use as Child Abuse
Article: Drug Exposed Children: What Caregivers Should Know
Article: Resilience Matters in Traumatized Children's Lives--and Sensory Activities Make the Difference
Article: Prenatal Meth Exposure Linked To Abnormal Brain Development
Booklet: Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Parent's Guide
Booklet: ADHD: A School-Based Evaluation Manual
by Jim Wright
Case Study: Methamphetamine and Child Welfare Services - A Four-County Case Study
Presentation: Psychotropic Medications in Pregnancy and the Effects in the Fetus and Child
Jennifer Lowry, MD - Children's Mercy Hospital
CONSEQUENCES OF PARENTAL SUBSTANCE ABUSE ON CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
Read through the links below to learn more specifics about the consequences of parental substance abuse.
**Behavioral consequences
**Medical and psychiatric consequences
**Educational consequences
**Emotional consequences
Website: http://www.otispregnancy.org/hm/inside.php?id=41
OTIS Fact Sheets:
To educate the public, the Organization of Teratology Information Specialists has compiled Fact Sheets on various exposures of concern. Fact Sheets answer frequently asked questions about exposures during pregnancy and lactation, and have been designed to print on a single double-sided page. Currently available Fact Sheets are listed below by category of exposure. All medications are listed by generic name. The generic name can be found on your prescription or medication packaging listed as the Active Ingredient, or in parentheses after the medication’s brand name.
Resources to Assist Substance/Trauma Exposed Children & Their Families
Youth Alternative Solutions Program
Ray L. Lozano Program Specialist
Trauma Services
909-558-4077
SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY RESOURCES
Non-Profit Organizations
Making A Difference Association
909-350-4895
Making A Difference provides support, referrals and services to families that are caring for children that have been drug
or alcohol exposed or that have special needs.
San Bernardino County Schools
- Desert/Mountain Region
Stephen Vaughn - Area Director
Phone (760) 242-6322 FAX (760) 242-6338 - East Valley Region
Randall Elphic - Area Director
Phone (909) 433-4622 Fax (909)433-4823 - West End Region
Peggy McFee - Area Director
Phone (909) 476-2689 Fax (909) 987-8788 - State Preschool Programs
Becky Thams - Manager
Phone (909) 433-4618 Fax (909) 433-4781
- Free hot lunch/breakfast program available at local schools for foster children and low income students
- C.A.P.S.
(909) 880-6844
An after-school program that is offered at thirty-two school sites. Students receive a nutritious snack and are provided with daily homework support.
Home Based Providers
- Perinatal/Alcohol Drug Risk Assessment (PADRA)
909-388-0400
Public Health Nurse (PHN) home evaluations provided for women who have a positive drug test at the time of delivery or present other risk factors for increased risk of child abuse and neglect.
- Early Start San Bernardino County
909-890- 4712
Inlandrc.org
Infants and toddlers, from birth up to 36 months, at risk of or with developmental delays or disabilities may be eligible to receive services.
Strengthening the Case:
Prenatal Alcohol Exposure Is Associated With Increased Risk for Conduct
Disorder
Elizabeth R. Disney, PhD*, William Iacono, PhD**, Matthew McGue, PhD**, Erin Tully, PhD** and Lisa Legrand, PhD**
*Chase Brexton Health Services, Baltimore, Maryland
**Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota
***This will open a link to the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics
***
STATE & NATIONAL RESOURCES
Faith Based Organizations
- Faiths Hope Foundation
800-871-HOPE
www.faithshopefoundation.org
Program assists families who are unable to pay utility bills, rent/mortgage, car payments or grocery bill due to major medical bills
Non-Profit Organization
- Sunshine Foundation
www.sunshinefoundation.org
Answers the dreams of seriously ill, physically challenged and abused children (ages 3-18)
Date: 4/29/2009
Media Contact: SAMHSA Press Office
Telephone: 240-276-2130
Study: More Than 1 in 10 Children Live with a Substance Abusing Parent
Almost 12 percent of children under the age of 18 years of age live with at least one parent who was dependent on or abused alcohol or an illicit drug during the past year, according to a report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
The report is based on national data from 2002 to 2007.
“The research increasingly shows that children growing up in homes with alcohol- and drug-abusing parents suffer – often greatly,” said SAMHSA Acting Administrator Eric Broderick, D.D.S., M.P.H. “The chronic emotional stress in such an environment can damage their social and emotional development and permanently impede healthy brain development, often resulting in mental and physical health problems across the lifespan. This underlines the importance of preventive interventions at the earliest possible age.”
Among the findings:
• Almost 7.3 million children lived with a parent who was dependent on or abused alcohol • About 2.1 million children lived with a parent who was dependent on or abused illicit drugs • 5.4 million children lived with a father who met the criteria for past year substance dependence or abuse, and 3.4 million lived with a mother who met this criteria.
Findings for Children Living with Substance-Dependent or Substance-Abusing Parents: 2002 to 2007 are drawn from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an annual nationwide survey of persons aged 12 and older. This report focused on questions asked of 87,656 parents aged 18 and older about their substance dependence and abuse.
The full report is available on the web at US Dept of Health and Human Services. Copies may be obtained free of charge by calling SAMHSA’s Health Information Network at 1-877-SAMHSA-7 (1-877-726-4727) or by going to Publications
Prenatal Alcohol Exposure and the Brain
Working with youth with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) in the Juvenile Justice System
Also:
Fetal alcohol exposure often means trouble for infants later in life
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) and the Role of Family Court Judges in Improving Outcomes for Children and Families and please review these other very important related documents:
Fetal Alcohol Interventive Study
FASCETS Oregon Fetal Alcohol Project: Abstract
Key Worker and Parent to Parent Support (by The Ministry of Health BC CANADA)
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Facts for Families:
By Keyword
In Numerical Order
Speedy Addiction
Methamphetamine use runs wild in the Inland Empire.
By Michael J. Medley
Published: February, 2006
Tragically, among the bucolic hills and rapid growth and expanding business base and future promise, the Inland Empire has become known for something sinister methamphetamine. U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has called meth "the most dangerous drug in America." Users call it by names that include "speed," an ironically appropriate definition. Meth combines the elements for a runaway drug: easy to make, cheap, plentiful, provides a quick high, highly addictive.
Dr. Kiti Freier of the Loma Linda University Medical Center is a clinical pediatric psychologist who often deals with the youngest victims of meth abuse. She estimates that 30% of children in Inland Empire public schools are in some way exposed to meth, a number that mirrors the Inland Empire's national reputation as one of the hot spots of its manufacture and abuse. That math is troubling when one considers that Riverside and San Bernardino county schools have a total K-12 enrollment of nearly 885,000; that would put more than a quarter-million schoolchildren at risk to some degree.
The Associated Press reported in December that the most recent statistics, from 2004, indicate one-third of California's meth lab busts that year were in the twin counties. Cpl. Dennis Gutierrez of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department reports that 764 meth labs were seized in that county in 2004. So, if young students are not users themselves, they often live with parents who are; they often live in a home where meth is being made; or they may know someone who is using meth.
Coming to your neighborhood
We have all read or heard the stories of quiet neighborhood homes that were meth labs when raided by the police or when they exploded into a ball of fire and debris from unstable materials. The rescued children are among the drug's
most innocent and saddest victims; others are left on the curbside of neglect.
Dr. Freier says, "So many of these kids, at 4 or 5, are the caregivers for the other kids. When you place them in another home, the foster parent gets upset because the 5-year-old won't play like a 5-year-old and is trying to boss the situation around." It is the result of a family consumed by an addiction.
Freier recalls one case: "A little 5-year-old girl named 'Sarah' has been the parent for her two younger siblings; one is 3 and the other is a baby. The mom was a meth user. The 3-year-old had only two forms of communication, was a selective mute who could talk but refused. The only word she used was 'bitch' and her only non-verbal communication was to flip the bird." The children are in foster care, but Dr. Freier reports, "The older one is frustrated because they want her to be a 4- or 5-year old, but she doesn't know how to be a 4- or 5-year-old. It's going to take a long time for her to be a child again."
Kathy Estes, who works with violence and drug problems for the San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools,
has an insight into this phenomenon of little children being thrust into the role of parents. She has found research on
drug addiction that indicates that at whatever age someone starts using on a regular basis, that is where a person's
emotional development freezes. "What happens with parents who have an addiction," she says, "if they start using at a young age and then have children, the children become the parent in the family because their parents are still
operating at the emotional age of a 15-year-old or whatever age they started using on a regular basis. Many of the
kids can't be kids because they are parenting the parents."
Across all groups
While the image of a meth abuser and lab is of a shack in the high desert, the reality is more varied. For example, Freier has concerns for another class of meth addiction victims, the so-called "super moms." This would be a middle- or upper-middle-class woman who wants to be the good wife, the good mother, the do-everything. "She gets on meth because
it gives her that extra charge so you don't have to sleep. You don't sleep for days so you feel like you're productive and you're doing all this stuff, taking the kids here, taking the kids there, making the muffins and brownies for school and,
because it affects the libido part of your brain, you can still be sexually pleasing to your husband."
This mom can feel like she is on top of the world until the addiction kicks in and everything, including parenting, starts to go downhill.
"You do really ridiculous things with all this energy," Freier says, "and without sleep you become irritable and that's where abuse begins. They get into it for what they think are the right reasons, but end up in a really bad place."
Reaching the young
Cpl. Gutierrez says that there is good news. By making the ingredients that make meth those include over-the- counter cold medicines more difficult to buy, the number of home meth labs in the area has shrunk. He warns, though,
that the number of addicts in the Inland Empire has remained fairly constant due in part to the amount of finished
product now coming in from Mexico. The number of local meth labs seized has nearly been cut in half since 2001, but
the amount of meth seized in the same period has nearly doubled, increasing the chances that kids will be exposed to
the drug or to someone affected by the drug. According to the DEA, methamphetamine seizures along the southwest
border went up 96% between 2001 and 2004.
Local law enforcement's battle against meth was not made any easier when Congress reduced funding for Byrne
Grants, a federal grant program that helps finance drug task forces, by $200 million. The Press-Enterprise reported in
January that California received $31.6 million in Byrne Grant funds in 2004, but state law enforcement officials are
bracing for a reduction of as much as 35% in 2006. The paper quoted Lt. Greg Garland of the San Bernardino County
Sheriff's Department Narcotics Division as saying that the county's
drug task force has had to redistribute personnel and resources due to earlier grant cuts and "we get cut, somebody's got to go."
Freier points out another innovation by drug dealers. "Some narc officers have told me that there was a little concern in the drug industry that they weren't getting as many meth addicts, so right now they're having the marijuana dealers
lace some of the marijuana joints with meth." She also says that it is being promoted to teenagers as a "do-it-yourself Viagra."
"The addicts do say that if you want to be sexually active a whole night long and have the best experience ever, this drug will do that for you. It's very addicting in that way as well."
As with most addictions, there are many victims. Sen. Dianne Feinstein last year lent her name to a bill aimed at
studying the ties between meth use and identify theft. Multiple news reports note that the need for continual use has
created a cottage industry that stretches from Canada to Mexico. As USA TODAY reported in December: "Identity theft has fast become the crime of preference among meth users for three reasons: It is non-violent, criminal penalties for
first-time users are light…and the use of computers and the Internet offers crooks anonymity and speed with which to
work." However, this choice of crime doesn't come from the meek and mild. Meth use is known to lead to violent,
destructive behaviors, turning some into Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Before she took her current position with the county, Estes was an interventionist for San Bernardino City Schools,
dealing with youngsters who had been identified by the court for drug, alcohol or violence problems. "I had one kid who was the most kind, gentle and respectful young man you would ever want to meet. He was a seventh-grader. It came
out during the time that I spent with him that when he was on one of his methamphetamine highs, he would find dogs
and throw them off of overpasses onto oncoming cars. So here's this kid who is by nature gentle and kind, and he
becomes a monster."
Offering help in the Inland Empire
The National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children has been established to help those children who have been
physically and psychologically harmed by drugs or by being in a drug environment. Communities in a dozen states have
formed DEC Alliances, including the Riverside County Drug Endangered Children Program and the San Bernardino
County Children's Network.
The Riverside County program is a cooperative effort by several agencies, including the district attorney, the Sheriff's Department and Child Protective Services. It has its own mobile unit that follows narcotics officers on raids of meth lab
homes and immediately begins to care for rescued children. The Riverside County Sheriff's Department reports that
about 140 children were rescued in 2005, but that may be just the tip of the iceberg. One of the pillars of the San
Bernardino County Children's Network is the Screening, Assessment, Referral, and Treatment SART) Process. SART
targets at-risk children through age 6.
Mothers Against Meth is a grassroots intervention effort to combat this menace and has chapters all over the country,
including nine in California. Any individual or group interested in starting a chapter is encouraged to contact Mothers Against Meth for more information.
But parents and the community as a whole are still the best weapons to keep children safe. "It is an overwhelming
issue in our community," says Freier. "We need to be aware of it and, rather than making it everyone else's problem,
we need to get involved and do something. It can work. It's relationships that put us down the bad trajectory, it's
relationships that can put us down the good one."
Adds Kathy Estes, "It goes back to the old parenting philosophy to stay in your child's life. I think it's so critical for parents to model what they want from their children. Always talk to them and explain those expectations to them."