A Fatal Collision: The Opioid Epidemic and the Dismantling of Child Protection Services in Washington State

by Marie Cohen

“B.B.” was born in 2022 and died of fentanyl poisoning in March 2023. During the ten years before B.B.’s death, DCYF had received 30 reports on B.B.’s family (many before B.B. was born) for issues including use of heroin, marijuana and alcohol in the home; lack of supervision of the children; domestic violence; an unsafe caregiver living with the family; an unsafe and unclean living environment unsecured guns in the home “out-of-control” behaviors by B.B.’s older siblings at school, with the mother described as “out-of-it” and unresponsive to school concerns; concerns about the children’s hygiene; and the mother driving under the influence of marijuana. An in-home services case that had been open since January 2023 was closed days before B.B.’s death.

On August 24, 2024, the Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) proudly announced in a press statement that it had reduced the number of children in out-of-home care by nearly half since 2018. Specifically, the number of children in foster care had fallen from 9,171 in 2018 to 4,971 as of August 14, 2024. “Outcomes like this demonstrate our agency’s commitment to keeping families together and children and youth safe,” DCYF Secretary Ross Hunter said. “Although the number of reports we are receiving remain [sic] consistent, we are seeing fewer children and youth in out-of-home care as families are being referred to support services rather than having children removed from their homes. Indeed, “safely reduce the number of children and youth in out of home care by half” (without a baseline date from which this can be measured) is one of DCYF’s six strategic priorities. But treating the decline in foster care (the direct result of government actions) as a desirable outcome in itself can contribute to a disregard of actual child welfare outcomes like safety and permanency.

How did DCYF reduce foster care by nearly 50 percent?

How did DCYF manage to slash its foster care rolls so radically in such a short time? Without providing specifics, the press release cites DCYF’s implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) and its emphasis on “supporting and collaborating with families by providing access to services and programs.” A DCYF spokesperson told the Seattle Times that the department was using services to avoid removing children or to reunite families sooner, citing efforts to connect parents to substance use or mental health treatment programs, bring a social worker into the home to “problem solve,” or “offer practical items, like diapers, car seats and beds.”

Apparently not satisfied with the changes implemented by DCYF, the Washington legislature in 2021 passed the Keeping Families Together Act (KFTA, also known as HB 1227), which took effect on July 1, 2023. Among other provisions, KFTA increased the standard for the court to order removal of a child from the home, which previously required the agency to demonstrate that “reasonable grounds that the child’s “health safety or welfare will be seriously endangered if not taken into custody and that at least one of the grounds set forth demonstrates a risk of imminent harm to the child.” As amended by KFTA, the law now requires the agency to demonstrate “that removal is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm to the child due to child abuse or neglect.” The petition for removal is required to contain “a clear and specific statement as to the harm that will occur if the child remains in the care of the parent, guardian or custodian, and the facts that support the conclusion.” Moreover, the court must consider whether participation by the parents or guardians in “any prevention services” would eliminate the need for removal. If so, they must ask the parent whether they are willing to participate in such services and shall place the child with the parent if the parent agrees.

On a page dedicated to KFTA implementation, DCYF explains that it has implemented the law by adopting new policies and procedures to determine whether to remove a child and by training and supporting staff to implement the new procedures and determine whether there is an imminent risk of serious harm to the child. DCYF reports that internal reviews show that staff are “taking additional steps to prevent removal of a child and to support a safety plan for the family.”

Shortly before KFTA took effect, DCYF, along with the Department of Health, the Health Care Authority, and the Washington State Hospital Association issued new guidelines to birthing hospitals and mandatory reporters. These guidelines stated that infants born substance exposed, but for whom there are no other safety concerns, can receive “voluntary wrap-around services from a community organization” without being reported to CPS. These voluntary services are being provided through federally-mandated “Plans of Safe Care (POSC).” Healthcare providers identifying a substance-exposed infant are instructed to access an online portal where they are directed to call DCYF if safety concerns are identified and to complete a POSC referral if not.

DCYF has been issuing quarterly data updates to assess the impacts of the KFTA. According to the most recent (October 2024) update, the law is having the intended impact of further reducing removals to foster care. DCYF reports a 16 percent decrease in the number of children removed in the July through September quarter of 2024 compared to the same quarter of 2022, before passage of KFTA. However, comparing foster entries for all ages in July through September 2024 to those in the same quarter of the previous year, the data indicate that foster care entries actually increased! Will this be the beginning of the end of the foster care reductions? That remains to be seen.

A longer-term view raises questions about the difference KFTA made, compared to the previous and ongoing efforts by DCYF to reduce foster care placements. Entries into foster care in Washington have decreased annually from 2017 to 2024, as shown in the chart below. The rate of decrease remained about the same between 2019 and 2024, while KFTA was not implemented until July 2023. Perhaps more children would have entered care if not for KFTA, but there is no way to assess the impact of KFTA as compared with DCYF’s ongoing effort to reduce removals.

Source: DCYF, Child Welfare Agency Performance Dashboard, Children Entering Care in SFY, https://dcyf.wa.gov/practice/oiaa/agency-performance/reduce-out-of-home-care/cw-dashboard

The reduction in foster care placements was supposed to be accompanied (and made possible) by an increase in in-home services (which DCYF calls Family Voluntary Services or FVS), and DCYF reports that the number of cases receiving FVS increased by nine percent from 1,809 in SFY2023 to 1,994 in SFY2024. This increase in FVS cases cannot be compared to the 17-percent decrease in children placed in foster care over the same period, as the unit of analysis is different (families rather than children). But the key question is the nature and intensity of these services and whether they really kept the children safe.

The cost of foster care reductions

The purpose of foster care is to keep children safe when they cannot be protected at home. So the essential question is whether the reduction in foster care placements has occurred without any cost to children. Trends in child fatalities and “near fatalities”¹ due to child abuse or neglect can provide a clue. These deaths and serious injuries are the tip of the iceberg of abuse and neglect. For each child who dies or is seriously injured, there are many more that are living in fear, pain, or hunger, and incurring lifelong cognitive, emotional, and physical damage. There are troubling signs of an increase in child fatalities and near fatalities over the past several years. In its most recent quarterly update, DCYF reports on the number of “critical events” or child fatalities and near fatalities that met its criteria for receiving an “executive review.” These include the deaths of any minor that had been in DCYF custody or received services within a year of the death that were suspected to be caused by child abuse or neglect.² They also include near fatality cases in which the child has been in the care of or received services from DCYF within three months preceding the near fatality or was the subject of an investigation for possible abuse or neglect. DCYF reports that the number critical events it reviewed increased from 23 in 2019 to 51 in 2023 and projects that it will increase to 61 in 2024.³

Source: DCYF, Keeping Families Together Act Quarterly Date Update, October 2024, https://dcyf.wa.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/DataUpdate_HB1227_October2024.pdf

The increase in critical events reflects, in part, the growing opioid crisis in Washington, as well as decisions Washington has made regarding how it intervenes to protect children. Opioid related emergencies have “dramatically increased for the entire population (adults and children) in Washington,” and children have not been immune. Fentanyl is particularly dangerous to young children because it takes only a tiny amount to kill a baby or toddler, who can mistake the pills for candy or put straws or foil meant for smoking the drug in their mouths. The number of fatalities and near fatalities reviewed by DCYF that involved fentanyl climbed from four in 2019 to a projected 35 in 2024. Since 2018, Washington’s Office of the Family and Children’s Ombuds (has observed an annual increase in child fatalities and near fatalities involving accidental ingestions and overdoses. Fifty-seven (or 85 percent) of the 67 incidents examined in 2023 involved fentanyl. Over half of these incidents involved children under three years old and a shocking 14 out of the 85 infants were 12 months old or less. As Dee Wilson and Toni Sebastian point out, the limited mobility and motor skills of infants suggests that some of these infants may have been given a small amount of fentanyl as a means of sedation.

The Washington Legislature was concerned enough about the possibility that KFTA is contributing to an increase in child fatalities and near fatalities in the context of the fentanyl epidemic that it passed a new law (SB 6109) in 2024. The law provides that a court must give “great weight” to the “lethality of high-potency synthetic opioids.….in determining whether removal is necessary to prevent imminent physical harm to the child due to child abuse or neglect.” However, it appears that there is confusion about exactly what that means.

Has DCYF given up on protecting children?

“We know that supporting and collaborating with families by providing access to services and programs increases their number of protective factors, leading to better outcomes,” said DCYF Assistant Secretary Natalie Green. “Giving families the tools they need to thrive and safely parent means more children and youth remain safely at home.”

DCYF, Washington Reduces the Number of Children in Out-Of-Home Care by Nearly Half, August 14, 2024.

But the work of DCYF’s own analysts, in their quarterly KFTA updates, raises doubts about whether DCYF is adequately performing its child protection function. These updates acknowledge that the agency is not removing as many children with a high risk of future encounters with child welfare (in other words, those who have a high risk of being harmed). And they also report that the department has seen “an increasing percentage of moderately high to high risk cases being re-referred to CPS within 90 days of the risk assessment. DCYF also reports that the overlap between KFTA and Plan of Safe Care (POSC) is resulting in fewer screened-in intakes involving substance-exposed newborns because these infants are now being referred to voluntary services under POSC.

There has been a chorus of voices alleging that DCYF is abdicating its child protection responsibilities. One foster parent told the Seattle Times that “she and other foster parents are finding children who now come into their care are in worse shape than they used to be, with more serious mental health conditions or greater exposure to lethal drugs like fentanyl.” She contends they’ve been left too long in unsafe conditions because of the heightened legal standard for removal. In The Erosion of Child Protection in Washington State, Toni Sebastian and Dee Wilson have cited the weakness of the management of Family Voluntary Services, which is often employed as an alternative to foster care.

A survey of executive reviews of 2023 and 2024 child maltreatment child fatalities with DCYF involvement within a year provided examples of problems with screening, investigations, and case management, including the following:

Hotline issues. Reviews documented multiple intakes screened out on the same family even when the family had been the subject of multiple calls. The reviews also suggest that too many cases may be assigned to the Family Assessment Response (FAR) pathway, an alternative to a traditional investigation designed for lower-risk cases. In FAR cases, a social worker assesses the family and refers it to voluntary services. There is no finding about whether maltreatment has occurred and no child removal unless the case is transferred to the investigative track.
Premature closure of FAR cases. Reviewers noted instances in which FAR cases were closed after parents failed to cooperate, without caseworkers considering a transfer to the investigative track or before determining that the parent had followed through with services.
Assessment failures: Reviewers noted multiple failures to adequately assess parents for domestic violence, mental health, and substance abuse; failures to contact collaterals (relatives and friends) and instead relying on parental self-reports; lack of recognition of chronic maltreatment; ignoring evidence of past problems if not included in the current allegation; and failing to anticipate future behavior based on historical patterns.⁴
Inadequate understanding of substance abuse: Reviewers noted the failure to conduct a full assessment of substance abuse including history, behavioral observations, and collateral contacts; disregarding the unique danger to children posed by fentanyl; downplaying the significance of marijuana use, particularly as an indicator of relapse from harder drugs; and disregarding alcohol abuse because it is legal.
Failure to obtain information from treatment and service providers. The failure to communicate with service providers about clients’ participation in services like drug treatment and relying on clients’ self-reports was noted by more than one review team. Sometimes the providers refused to cooperate. Staff told the team reviewing one case about a substance abuse treatment provider that routinely refuses to cooperate, even when parents sign release forms, and routinely tells clients not to cooperate with DCYF.
Lack of subject matter expertise. Reviewers pointed to the lack of deep knowledge about domestic violence, substance use disorder, and mental health among staff doing investigations, assessments, and case management and the need to provide access to subject matter experts when needed.
Failure to remove a child despite safety threats. The team reviewing the case of a four-year-old who died after ingesting fentanyl reported that there were at least two different times where an active safety threat was present that would have justified filing a petition in court to place the child in foster care. However, the staff believed, based on past experience, that the court would have denied the petition and therefore did not file.
Delayed Reunifications: “P.L,.” a toddler allegedly beaten to death by his mother, was in foster care for over three years but his mother’s rights were never terminated. He was on a trial return to his mother for just over five months when he was found dead with bruises and burns all over his body.

Staff shortages and high turnover were mentioned as contributing to the observed deficiencies in case practice in almost every fatality review. In B.B.’s case, the reviewers noted that the office had been functioning with a 50 percent vacancy rate for the last several years, stating that such a vacancy rate leads to high turnover, high caseloads, caseworkers with little experience, and supervisors forced to carry cases rather than support their caseworkers. Even caseloads that comply with state standards may be too high. The standard of 20 families per caseworker in FVS was noted to be unmanageable by one review panel, which noted that FVS cases are often discussed as high risk cases and require multiple contacts per month with family members, services providers, and safety plan participants. As Dee Wilson and Toni Sebastian put it, “[b]etting young endangered children’s lives on in-home safety plans developed and implemented by inexperienced and overwhelmed caseworkers is reckless, ill-advised public policy.”

Conclusions and Recommendations

Treating the decline in foster care as a desirable outcome in itself, as Washington and other states have done, is both disingenuous and dangerous. Any government can slash the foster care rolls reducing or ending child removals, as many “child welfare abolitionists” recommend. The central purpose of child welfare services, including foster care, is to protect children from child abuse and neglect. A reduction in foster care placements that results in the failure to protect children is no kind of success.

DCYF told King5 that “the increase in child fatalities and near fatalities in Washington is not being driven by the change in removal standards under House Bill 1227 or the reduction in the number of children in foster care. It is being driven by the increased availability of a highly addictive and hazardous drug and a lack of substance use disorder treatment in our communities.” But whether the agency’s policy or the drug epidemic is more at fault is not the right question. It is DCYF’s job to protect children given the circumstances that exist, including the drug epidemic and the lack of sufficient treatment, keeping in mind that treatment often does not work the first, second, third or subsequent times.

What can be done? DCYF needs to address the workforce crisis, which will probably require increasing pay and improving working conditions, or even possibly relaxing requirements for employment as a caseworker in investigations, assessment, and FVS. DCYF should consider policy and practice changes such as reducing the FVS caseload cap from 20 cases per worker; Instituting a chronic neglect unit, with expert caseworkers and even lower caseloads, for chronic cases; finding a way to limit the use of FAR to cases that are truly low-risk; and promoting the use of dependency petitions for court supervision when children remain in the home, as suggested by two fatality review committees.⁵ DCYF should request and the legislature should fund a variety of ancillary services for families, starting with therapeutic childcare for all preschool aged children with FVS cases as well as those who have been reunited with their parents. Such childcare would give parents a break and parenting support, keep children safe for a large part of the day, and ensure another set of eyes on the child, among other benefits. Also needed are more residential drug treatment centers where parents can live with their children.

Finally, more transparency is needed so that legislators, advocates and the public have access to the findings of DCYF’s executive review teams. Washington deserves credit for sharing its executive child fatality reviews. But there is no reason that the DCYF should not share its near-fatality reviews as well. We know something about how DCYF failed B.B. and the other children who died. But the public needs access to the reviews of those children who narrowly escaped death as well as those who did not. It is only through such transparency that the public can see the actual impact of all the self-congratulatory proclamations about “safely reducing the number of children in out-of-home care.”

Notes

A “near fatality” is defined by state law as “an act that, as certified by a physician, places the child in serious or critical condition.”
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DCYF relies on the Office of the Family and Children’s Ombuds (OFCO) to determine whether the fatality appears to have been caused by abuse or neglect, therefore requiring DCYF to conduct a review.
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Data collected by OFCO are more confusing. OFCO reviews all fatalities and near fatalities in which the child’s family was involved in Washington’s child welfare system within 12 months of the fatality. There number of near-fatalities reviewed by OCFO increased annually from 21 in 2018 to 70 in 2023, according to its most recent annual report on Child Fatalities and Near Fatalities in Washington State. But fatalities reviewed by OFCO did not show the same pattern. They reached a peak of 87 in 2018 and fell sharply in 2019, then rose yearly until they reached 85 in 2022 and then dropped to 79 in 2023. Nevertheless, adding fatalities and near fatalities together shows an alarming increase in critical incidents from 108 in 2018 to 149 in 2023.
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For example, in the case of “R.W.,” a child who died at age four after ingesting fentanyl, an investigation was closed because the children were staying with relatives, despite the mother’s history of repeatedly removing the children from relatives with whom she had left them. A month later the child was found dead at a motel in the custody of the parents.
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See https://dcyf.wa.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/reports/mk-cfr-final-redacted.pdf and https://dcyf.wa.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/reports/ecfr-os-24.pdf ↩︎

Opioid Crisis: Removing Infants from Mothers on Medication Assisted Treatment is Misguided

An NPR story (New Hampshire Mothers Struggling with Opioid Addiction Fight to Keep their Children) aired on June 2, 2018, introduced us to Jillian Broomstein, a New Hampshire mother whose two-week-old infant was removed from her by the state’s child welfare agency. Broomstein was on methodone to combat her addiction to heroin and it was working. She had not taken heroin for months.

Methadone is one of the two medications that is used in Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) for Opioid Use Disorder. MAT is “the use of medications in combination with counseling and behavioral therapies to provide a whole patient approach to the treatment of substance use disorders.” The medications commonly used to treat opioid addiction in pregnant women include methadone and buprenorphine.

Research has shown that MAT is the most effective treatment for opioid use disorder, at least doubling the rates of abstinence from opioids compared with treatments that use a placebo or no medication. MAT has been recognized by the World Health Organization as the most effective treatment for opioid use disorder. Moreover, MAT is the treatment the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommends for pregnant women with opioid use disorder.

Concerns about MAT for pregnant women arise from the fact that their infants may experience neonatal abstinence syndrome. But as the lead author of the ACOG guidance states, “Concern about medication-assisted treatment must be weighed against the negative effects of ongoing misuse of opioids, which can be much more detrimental to mom and baby.” MAT increases adherence to prenatal care and drug treatment and reduces the risk of pregnancy complications. Abrupt withdrawal from opiates or safer substitutes means a mother is more likely to relapse, thus making it less likely that she can reunify with her child. Neonatal abstinence syndrome, on the other hand, is treatable and does not appear to have lasting effects.

Bias against MAT among professionals working with substance-abusing families has been documented often. An excellent federal study, discussed in an earlier post, found that MAT is not always understood or accepted by child welfare professionals, judges or even in the substance abuse treatment community. One reason for such bias may be that many professionals have past experience with other types of drugs such as cocaine and methamphetamine, for which MAT is not available

Information on state policies regarding reporting, investigation, and placement of infants exposed to methadone and buphrenorphine is not readily available. A report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration suggests that New Hampshire is not alone, indicating that child welfare agencies “may use a positive toxicology result for methadone or buprenorphine at birth as a presumptive cause for child removal.”

In some states, on the other hand, these cases may not even be reported or investigated. Pennsylvania law requires reporting only if the drug is illegal, although individual hospitals may choose to report other cases. In Massachusetts, for example, the Department of Children and Family Services can screen out a report involving a substance-exposed newborn if the only substance affecting the newborn was methadone, buprenorphine or naltrexone and if the substance was used as part of a treatment program.

But do we know that methadone and buprenorphine are consistent with safe parenting? Unfortunately, there seems to be no research evidence on this question. We do know that with stable dosing, methadone and buphrenorphine does not cause the euphoric “high” associated with heroin and prescription painkillers.

Removing infants from their mothers who are participating in MAT has many negative consequence. It disrupts the critical attachment process between infant and mother. It may lead discouraged mothers to go cold turkey in order to get their children back. This may lead to relapse and permanent loss of the children.

Instead of automatic removal of the children, new mothers on MAT should be supervised by CPS for at least six months to ensure that they are capable of safe parenting. During that period they should receive intensive services akin to those provided by Kentucky’s Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams (START), a program that has been in municipalities in New York, Indiana, Georgia and North Carolina. Each family is paired with a specially-trained CPS worker and a mentor who is in long-term recovery. Caseloads are limited and each family receives weekly visits from both the CPS worker and the mentor for the first 60 days. START has been rated as a promising practice by the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare.

Most states, particularly those ravaged by the opioid epidemic, are reporting critical shortages of foster homes. Preventing unnecessary foster care placements, in addition to the obvious benefits for parent-child attachment and long-term sobriety of the parent, will allow these homes to be available for children who really need them.

Opioid Crisis: New federal report shows child welfare impact

After more than a decade of decreasing, the national foster care caseload rose by 10% between 2012 and 2016. Many public officials and commentators have blamed this increase on parental substance use, especially due to to the opioid crisis, but evidence has been lacking on the national level to support this conjecture. A new report from the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services provides new evidence linking substance abuse with increasing foster care caseloads. It also highlights the daunting challenges facing those professionals at the interface of child welfare and substance abuse in hard-hit areas, and highlights the urgency of helping them meet these challenges..

The ASPE researchers obtained data on drug overdose deaths and hospitalizations and child welfare indicators for all of the counties in the US. They conducted quantitative analysis and statistical modeling to assess the relationship between substance abuse and child welfare. They also conducted interviews and focus groups with child welfare administrators and practitioners, substance use treatment administrators and practitioners, judges and other legal professionals, law enforcement officials, and other service providers who work with families affected by substance abuse in counties that are being hard-hit by the opioid crisis. Their key findings include:

Caseloads: There is a correlation between the severity of a county’s drug crisis and the burden on its child welfare system. The researchers found that when related factors are controlled, counties with higher rates of overdose deaths and drug hospitalizations had higher child welfare reports, substantiations, and foster care entries.
Nature of Cases: The researchers also found that higher rates of substance abuse overdoses corresponded to more “complex and severe child welfare cases,” as measured by a greater proportion of children with maltreatment reports that were removed from their homes. Substance abusing parents have multiple issues including domestic violence, mental illness and extensive history of trauma. Professionals in hard-hit areas described great difficulty in reunifying families due to the multigenerational nature of the epidemic (reducing the availability of kin caregivers) as well as the weakening and loss of community institutions including churches over time.
Treatment Challenges: Several major challenges affect agencies’ ability to get treatment for substance-abusing parents. These include cursory and delayed assessments resulting in treatment delays; misconceptions about Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT), which has been found to be the most effective treatment for opioid use disorder; and lack of treatment options matching parents’ needs, including family-friendly treatment options.
Systemic Barriers: Agencies are struggling to meet families’ needs due to multiple systemic factors including inadequate staffing leading to unmanageable caseloads, shortages of foster homes, and difficulty coordinating between systems and states (in the many counties that border other states).

This study has many policy implications. Unfortunately, all of them involve the need for increased financial resources both within the child welfare system and beyond it. The nation’s supply of effective drug treatment needs a major boost. Child welfare systems need financial help to improve assessments, hire new staff and train all staff on substance abuse and treatment, and increase the availability of high quality placement options for the children affected by the substance abuse crisis.

Treatment. More treatment programs are needed to meet the needs of parents involved with child welfare. In particularly, the study documented shortages of MAT and family-friendly treatment options. Clearly the opioid crisis is much broader than its impact on child welfare and requires a much broader response. In a full-page editorial on April 22, the New York Times stated that Congress has taken only “baby steps” so far in addressing this crisis by appropriating only a few billion dollars over the past few years. The Times quotes Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University, that “at least $6 billion a year is needed for 10 years to set up a nationwide network of clinics and doctors to provide treatment with medicines like buprenorphine and methadone.” Supporters of the recently–passed Family First and Prevention Services Act, which allows Title IV-E foster care funds to be used for drug treatment and other services to keep families together, have exaggerated its potential to help parents obtain treatment. If the treatment slots do not exist, money to purchase treatment won’t help. Moreover, many or most parents involved with child welfare already have Medicaid or other insurance that could pay for treatment if it existed.
Assessment. It is crucial that parents involved with child welfare receive thorough assessments of their substance abuse and other needs. The lack of proper assessments is a also problem for parents and systems not affected by the opioid crisis. A change in the standards of child welfare practice requiring a thorough assessment, conducted by a licensed professional, for each parent with a child in foster care, is necessary. Of course this would require additional funding.
Training. Lack of knowledge among professionals about the efficacy of different treatment options can prevent parents from obtaining the most effective treatment. Child welfare and court staff need training in substance abuse and treatment options just as they need training in mental health, domestic violence, and other issues facing many of their clients.
Staffing. In areas that are overwhelmed by cases due to the substance abuse crises, staff shortages lead to burnout, which in turn leads to more departures and increased shortages. These staff shortages are dangerous to children and to staff themselves and should not be allowed to continue.
Foster placements. More placements are clearly needed in some hard-hit areas, but it is not likely that enough traditional foster homes can be found, especially in light of the widespread nature of the substance abuse epidemic in some of these areas. That’s why we may need to look at new placement options, including family-style group homes and professional foster homes for four to six children, including large sibling groups.

The new study from ASPE has received a shocking lack of attention. It adds new, more rigorously collected evidence to the avalanche of media reports that have documented the impact of the substance abuse crisis on children and families. So far, the nation has not responded to this crisis with the urgency it demands. We will pay a high cost in the future–in broken families and damaged children–if we don’t provide the needed resources now.