Idaho reports longer stays in foster care
Idaho children are staying in foster care 10 days longer than they were six years ago, a trend state officials attribute partially to methamphetamine use by parents and the difficulty of treating the drug’s addiction.
“It’s like breathing,” said Tammi Nichols, 36, a former Post Falls meth addict whose daughter spent nine months in foster care. “You have to breathe to live.”
Her sister Tonya Waterman, 33, had three children in foster care for several years as she tried to get clean.
“It engulfs you,” Waterman said. “You have to have it to move. You can’t function without it.”
Today both sisters are drug free, have jobs, homes and their children. They also have a deep appreciation for the foster care system and agree that losing their children helped them finally get clean.
Meth is just one aspect of why children are staying longer in the system, an average of 114.7 days in 2007, said Michelle Britton, division administrator for Family and Community Services for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
Other reasons are that Idaho has more children needing care – especially in fast-growing population centers around Boise and in Kootenai County – and there is high turnover among state social workers. The result is children aren’t returned to their parents or adopted as quickly, Britton said. In 2007, there were 3,421 children in foster care in Idaho compared with 2,176 children in 2001. The increase has had a big effect on the state budget, where $15.1 million was spent on foster care in 2006 compared with $6.7 million in 2001.
Idaho lawmakers are considering approving funding for additional staff to help with the increased caseloads.
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee approved 18 new positions for child welfare workers, 12 social workers and six technicians who help social workers with tasks such as transporting children to appointments and supervising family visits. Both the House and Senate have approved the expenditure, which is waiting for the governor’s signature.
But a bill that would have established a review board for child deaths was blocked by Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, chairwoman of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, after it passed the House.
Forty-nine states have a system for reviewing child deaths, and Lodge said that if information is needed, it can be collected from one of them. She said the bill could lead to an erosion of parental rights, or parents being found at fault if their children die in activities deemed risky, like riding horses without helmets.
Proponents say the idea is to spot trends and prevent future child deaths, not second-guess the investigations of such deaths.
There isn’t a lot of progress in the treatment of meth addicts. Britton said meth has had a direct impact on the foster care system and the dramatic growth in Idaho’s female prison population. And there’s no way to track how many grandparents and fathers become primary care providers for children who never enter the state foster system.
“The biggest reason children are in foster care is neglect associated with substance abuse,” Britton said, adding that’s all substances, not just meth.
Waterman dabbled with other drugs but smoking meth at age 23, when the father of her two children died of cancer. She began making the drug and was trapped in a cycle of hooking up with men who could support her and her habit. In March 2000, police raided her house and her two children were taken by Child Protection Services and placed with her mother. She failed several treatment programs and got pregnant again, but not even that gave Waterman the will to quit. The baby tested positive for meth when she was born. Waterman’s mother refused to care for the third child, who was placed in foster care. Then Waterman went to prison.
“When I sat in prison I decided I didn’t want to live like that anymore,” she said. “Honestly, if I hadn’t went to prison I would be dead.”
Nichols, Waterman’s older sister, began using drugs at a young age and cycled through juvenile detention and psychiatric wards for years. At 18, she got married and had a baby girl. The courts took the baby away, awarding custody to the father.
Nichols’ partying increased and she got pregnant again in 1997. By that time, she was manufacturing meth with her sister. Then life changed when her 18-month-old daughter drank water from a bong used to smoke meth. While her baby fought for her life, Nichols knew she was likely going to jail and questioned how she would get high.
“It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my god that’s my kid, or, is she going to die,’ ” said Nichols, who escaped jail time on a technicality and got her daughter back after nine months.
Today, her daughter is 10 years old and Nichols has been clean for eight years. She also has a 5-year-old son who has never been part of the foster care system and Nichols wants it to remain that way.
“I did everything right this time,” she said.