Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 3, 1990 TAG: 9007030514
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B2 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Both her children were exposed to drugs in the womb. And both spent their preschool years in a home where drug abuse was common.
Their mother is one of 13 drug- or alcohol-addicted young women who are slowly learning avenues out of a brutal cycle of poverty, abuse and death.
An intensive, federally-funded program at the Medical College of Virginia here aims to teach responsibility and self-reliance to women for whom those are very foreign values, program officials said. To succeed, the women must change every aspect of their lives, from where they live to what they eat.
The mothers receive intensive drug counseling and a wide array of other services. They learn the most basic child care and social skills and get help finding jobs.
"These mothers are poorly equipped to be parents. They come from terrible backgrounds. Most have been physically or sexually abused, most have an addicted parent," said Dr. Deborah Haller, the program's manager. "If a woman cannot bond with her baby, the child does not learn how to establish trust in other people, or what is going to be expected of him," in society, Haller said. "That sets that child, and society, up for a whole lot of other problems later on."
Doctors and social workers running the program aim to prove even the most costly, comprehensive treatment is far cheaper than the long-term costs of housing and caring for poor families.
"We are very interested in keeping mothers and babies together and getting the mothers competent. The cost of that is just a drop in the bucket compared to society paying for that child forever," Haller said.
Children born to poor, drug-addicted mothers often are born prematurely, and are sometimes addicted themselves. These women almost never have health insurance, and their babies often require expensive, long-term hospital care on the public tab, Haller said.
"Say it costs us $7,000 to treat a woman and her baby for a year," MCV project creator Dr. Sidney Schnoll said. "But if we can keep that child out of the neonatal unit at the hospital, we will save $1,500 to $2,000 each day, because that is the cost of care in that unit. In three days you spend nearly what it would cost to treat that mother and baby for a whole year."
The MCV program is the most expansive of a number of privately-run treatment programs in Virginia aimed at stanching a growing flood of addicted mothers and children, officials said.
One quarter of all the women who give birth at MCV show evidence of some kind or drug or alcohol use, Haller said.
Although Virginia has a low birth rate - 30th in the nation - the state's infant mortality rate is the 14th highest in the country, according to state figures.
Nationally, estimates that between 100,000 and 375,000 drug-exposed infants are born each year may be far too low, a General Accounting Office study released last week said. Cases go unreported because many hospitals do not screen and test pregnant women for drug use, the study said.
Some participants in the MCV experiment are teen-agers, most are not married and most already have other children. All have abused alcohol or drugs extensively, program officials said.
Statewide, one in four babies is born out of wedlock and 12 percent of all births are to teen-agers, state figures show.
Most of the mothers in the 18-month-old program have received welfare or other public assistance all their lives and some did not complete high school, program officials said.
by CNB