The number and share of kids who enter foster care due to their parents’ drug use has skyrocketed in recent years, a recent analysis of federal data found.
The proportion of foster-care entries due to parental drug use increased from 14.5% in fiscal year 2000 to 36.3% in fiscal year 2017, according to the research letter published this week in JAMA Pediatrics, “even when entries for other removal reasons mostly declined.”
Nearly one quarter of foster-care entries between Oct. 1, 1999 and Sept. 30, 2017, almost 1.2 million out of nearly 5 million, were attributable parental drug use.
Nearly one quarter (23.4%) of foster-care entries between Oct. 1, 1999 and Sept. 30, 2017 — almost 1.2 million out of nearly 5 million — were attributable parental drug use, according to the study, which analyzed data from the Health and Human Services Department’s Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System.
Kids who entered the foster-care system due to parental drug use were more likely than those entering for other reasons to be white, aged 5 or under and from the South. And the share of kids entering due to parental drug use who were white, Midwestern and from non-metropolitan areas rose over the period studied.
Though the findings didn’t capture specific drugs used, the study’s authors noted that they coincide with “increasing trends in opioid use and overdose deaths nationwide during this period,” among other potential factors. Inconsistencies in reporting drug use could pose a limitation to the study, they added.
The number of opioid-involved overdose deaths was six times higher in 2017 than it was in 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One estimate pegs the societal cost of the opioid crisis in 2015 at nearly $504 billion.
The number of opioid-involved overdose deaths was six times higher in 2017 than it was in 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Foster-care placement generally implies that a child has faced abuse or neglect. Adverse childhood experiences, such as abuse, neglect, or having a parent who uses drugs, increase the risk of chronic health conditions and other poor outcomes across the lifespan,” the authors of the present study wrote.
“Additionally, when children enter foster care because of parental drug use, episode duration is longer and less likely to result in reunification with the parent. This is of special concern because of the large proportion of children experiencing entry before age 5 years, a critical period for forming stable attachments.”
A 2018 Health and Human Services research brief found that higher overdose-death and drug-hospitalization rates corresponded with higher child-welfare case-load rates, while higher substance-use indicators were linked to “more complex and severe” child-welfare cases.
That report noted that “child welfare agencies and their community partners are struggling to meet families’ needs.”
Parental substance abuse is a risk factor for child maltreatment and involvement in the child-welfare system, according to a report by the federal Child Welfare Information Gateway.
But “while the link between substance abuse and child maltreatment is well documented,” the report says, “it is not clear how much is a direct causal connection and how much can be attributed to other co-occurring issues” such as mental illness, poverty and domestic violence.
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