Drabble, Laurie A

Grossman, B

English

Drabble, Laurie

SJSU ScholarWorks

What addiction professionals need to know about welfare reform and child welfare.

San Jose State UniversitySJSU ScholarWorksFaculty Publications Social Work1-1-1999What addiction professionals need to know aboutwelfare reform and child welfareB GrossmanUniversity of California - BerkeleyLaurie A. DrabbleSan Jose State University, laurie.drabble@sjsu.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/social_work_pubPart of the Social Work CommonsThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Social Work at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in FacultyPublications by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact scholarworks@sjsu.edu.Recommended CitationB Grossman and Laurie A. Drabble. "What addiction professionals need to know about welfare reform and child welfare" PreventionPipeline (1999): 6-8.I r What Addiction Professionals Need To Know About Welfare Reform and Child Welfare By Bart Grossman and Laurie Drabble Editor:r note: The following is an excerpt from a talk presented by Bart Grossman. Ph.D . ar the l'ac!fic Sou th west Addiction Techn ology Tran.'.fer Center conference, "Child Welfare Wld Addiction Servi ces: Working Together for California:~ Children and Families, " held in San [)ief?o on Novemher 9 and 1 0, 1998. Grossman is an adjunct professor of social work and director offield instruc­tion at the University ofCalifornia Berkeley School ofSocial ife/fare. Laune Drahhle, Ph.D. (Candidate) at the University ofCalifornia Berkeley School ofSociul Wrdjare, provided research assistance in the preparatwn ofthe paper. Families Involved With Drugs The general Temporary Assis­tance for Needy Families (TANF) population is about 13 miJlion nationally, which translates to about 4 million adults. It is estimated th at around 1 0 lo 15 percent are drug and alcohol involved. The child welfare population is much smaller, with about 450,000 kids in care. Maybe twice lhat number come into contact with the child welfare system at some point. But statistics reveal th at between 60 to RO percent of these families are substance involved_ Both of these groups are increasingly considered priorities for Government-supported drug treatment. Meeting thei r needs will require some significant departures from the ways in which a lcohol and drug services have been provided resulting in some different models of interaction between the drug and alcohol system and other public and private social services. When they are trained, addiction professionals must be taught to serve new populations, to work m new contexts, and to manage new realities. The growing emphasis on services, and therefore funding, for substance-involved families creates opportunities. Rut these opportuni­ties aren't without costs. The costs will include significant change in the organization of services. Many of the models and ap­proaches that have been central to drug treatment will need major revision. Instead of serving indi­vidual adults whose energy can be completely harn essed to the tasks of recovery, the Alcohol or Other Drugs (AOD) system should more effectively serve families with multiple problems and demands. Those families- primarily single mothers and kids- bring a broad array of problems and pressures such as housing, employment, mental illness, crime ami delin­quency, physical illness, develop­ment delay, learning disabilities, family conflict, domestic violence, and others. To address these problems, drug and alcohol treatment professionals will increasingly need to function as membe rs ofmulti-system, multi ­professional teams. It won' t work to dig a moat around the therapeutic community or to sec the other agencies- welfare, child protective services (CPS), and county mental health- as a bunch of incompetents who ju st don 't understand addic­tion. If you are in the drug and alcohol field, increasingly the problems of these other systems will be your problems, their constraints will limit your freedom, and thei r resources will pa y your salary. So what do AOD professiona ls need ro Jearn to be effective in this new climate? What do AOD professionals need to know about CPS and TANF and about sub­stance-involved kids and families? CPS and TANF Asking what AOD professionals 6 Pre~,ention Pipeline need lo know about TANF and CPS might be seen by some in the fie ld as untair. After all, what do CPS and lANF workers know about drugs and alcohol? Unfortunately, the answer to that is generally " not much." Bur that situation is changing rapidly. State and county social services administrators all over the country arc moving to require that their workers receive pre-service and in-service training on drugs and alcohol. The quality, the scope, and the objectives of this training vary widely. In those communities in which AOD workers have a basic under­standing of the child and family agency, the existence of this training may foster more effective collaboration between these systems. However, where AOD workers are not prepared to under­stand and respond to the needs of the child welfare and TANF systems, clients will experience an accelerating squeeze between the assumptions of treatment and the demands of the social services systems. Clients will get hurt and the potential contribution of the AOD system will be blunted. Child Protective Services The first thing AOD profession­als must understand 1s that CPS operates according to a rather rigid legal clock . Workers have some discretion but not a great deal, and they have to answer directly and continuously to family and juvenile courts. When CPS workers say a family v isit is needed or a client needs to be evaluated for reunifica­tion, they aren't just being difficult; they are following the Jaw and usually a judge's orders. Current child welfare practice is driven by the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-272), as modified last year. The goal of this act was to correct the longsta nding problem of foster care drift by getting children out of placement and into a permanent famil y as quickly as possible. Under the law, where possible, removi ng children from their homes is to be prevented by offering services to strengthen families and prevent continuing abu se and neglect. Where children arc at risk they are to be removed to foster care. The CPS agency is responsible for making a reasonable effort to reunify the family, offering a variety of services including drug treatment. But the goal is to get the children permanently settled as soon as possible. Last year, Con­gress decided that in too many cases the emphasis on family preservation was resulting in kids staying in foster care too long. As a re!>ult, the c hild welfare agencies now lace tighter time frames, essentia lly l year-a 6-month initial he aring and then a 12-month permanency hearing. So the event horizon for child welfare is 6 to 18 months. This child welfare clock is often at odds with an AOO timetable sometimes described as "one day at a time Cor the rest of your life:' according to Nancy Young ofChildren and Family Future. Addiction is a chronic, relapsing condition that is not quickly or easily overcome. The course of treatment can easily be exacerbated ifthe drug treatment agency and the CPS agency become involved, as too often occurs, in a soccer game with the client as th e ball. Struggles over confidentiality, over visitation, and over drug testing may be disturbing for workers but they can have devastating consequences fo r a family. The AOD professional working with a mother in the child welfare system has to sec that the client is a fam ily and the interven­tion has to be far faster and broader in scope than traditional drug treatment. Constraints and Consequences of TANF TANF represents another set of constraints and consequences. TANF replaced the old Aid to Families With Dependent C hildren (AFDC) program after the long welfare rcfonn struggle. The assumption ofTANP is that financial assistance is a temporary thing until people are put to work. While the Federal law allowed 24 ,tfurch!April 1999 7 months of assistance each time with a lifetime limit of 5 years, Califor­nia established a one-time limit of 18 months. Because the goal is to get people to work-there are both penalties and rewards for the State and counties based on their success with this goal-the California legislature recognized that substance abuse would be a problem. With the skillful intervention of California Assembly member Dionne Ahroner, funds were earmarked specifically for drug treatment for TANF parents. and the welfare agency is authorized to stop the TANF clock for 6 months on top of the 18 months for a client in treatment. Now 6 months may not seem like much, but in the context of this rather pumtive law, it is a very big deal. Many TANF parents face tight time con­straints-they get 6 months to recover enough to look for work and then 18 instances, for this population. If addicted moms are to be success­fully reunified, they will need to be separated from their kids for as short a time as possible. And we will need programs that can house and treat whole families. lfTANF recipients in recovery are to be given the support they need to find and keep jobs, they will need support that is sensitive to the special issues and pressures they face as substance abusers. In short, addiction agencies that serve this population will need to see the client not as just an individual addict, bur as a substance-involved months to find a job or lose TANF supports such as medical care, child care, and a housing allowance. Child welfare parents get 12 months to recover sufficiently and to be eligible to be reunited with their kids, and for most of these the TANF clock will also be ticking. Service Implications What are the service implica­tions? The old standard, individu­ally-focus residential program just isn't going to be enough, in most family. Moreover, they must be prepared to oficr or broker a wide array of services including employ­ment searches, work skills, housing, education, childcare. and health services. Only a handful of settings exist where an addicted mother can take her kids into treatment with her~ where she won't have to choose between her identity as a mother and her identity as a substance abuser. Kids from poor. substance­involved families can do well, but they may bring a wide range of medical, emotional, and behavioral problems. They need structure, health care, treatment, education, stability, and continuity. Getting a mother into treatment, offering a friendly smile, and providing some crayons just won't cut it. Making Leaps The leaps that will be required of the AOD system and its workers in responding to the needs of poor families in the TANF and child welfare system are prodigious. There is an immediate need for more autonomous AOD profession­als who have a firm grasp on their exper­tise and who have the ability to communi­cate effectively across the jargon gaps between our various systems. Although their specialty area is drugs and alcohol. we need professionals who can see addiction and drug involvement as part of people's stories and not as the only thing that really matters. The AOD system needs to learn how to create and sustain programs that meet the special needs of women and children, that can adapt to the child welfare and TANF time clocks , and that are family-friendly in structure and communication. The opportunities for AOD professionals to be involved to be part of the solution for poor families in the public services arc opening quickly, but they can also close quickly ifAOD is unable or unwilling to respond. 8 Prevention Pipeline 

What addiction professionals need to know about welfare reform and child welfare

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What addiction professionals need to know about welfare reform and child welfare

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