Across Wisconsin, a steep increase in kids separated from addict parents

APPLETON - Mary Brown waited until her kids left for school, then grabbed a rope and stood in the bathroom with awful thoughts in her head.

Would her children be better off without a heroin addict for a mother? The question nagged at her mind.

But she dropped the rope and picked up the phone to call her mother, setting off a series of events that involved getting treatment and temporarily losing custody of her kids.

“I just broke down," she said. "I needed help."

Brown didn't know it then, but the 36-year-old Appleton mom would become part of a statewide trend.

The number of children separated from their parents by county authorities has climbed across Wisconsin to its highest level in nearly a decade. A USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin investigation found drug abuse is clearly driving the uptick — leaving more families in turmoil, straining public resources and creating a shortage of foster parents.

Fond du Lac County social workers reported 49 parent-child separations involving drugs last year, more than double the county's average over the previous seven years. Portage County social workers counted 54 drug-related separations in the past two years, exceeding the previous six years combined.

"You have people who are just struggling, even if they have a desire to be sober," said Teresa Kovach, Portage County’s child welfare supervisor.

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Statewide, child endangerment cases flagged for drugs have been rising since 2011. About one of every five separations reported to the state in 2015 was drug-related, up from one in eight cases reported four years earlier.

Social workers are now commonly finding children who were left to fend for themselves, often in filthy homes with drugs and needles scattered around within reach. Some kids have watched a parent overdose.

"This is their normal," said Stephanie Byer, a social worker in Marathon County, where 56 children were separated from their parents because of drug abuse in 2016, double the number from the previous year.

Out of 16 counties in Wisconsin that provided information about their drug-related caseloads, nearly all had significant increases in children removed from homes, according to an analysis by USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin, which spent months researching child welfare records and interviewing county officials, social workers and parents.

The issue has gained the attention of state lawmakers, who have been considering a more than $6 million increase in child welfare services as well as pay raises for foster parents. In June, citing concern over rising caseloads, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos formed a task force to examine the state's foster care system.

The cases typically take several months to years to resolve as social workers try to keep children safe and get help for parents struggling with an addiction, including those who are not ready to cooperate.

A few weeks after the day she contemplated suicide, Brown went to treatment instead. Her children — 8-year-old Madison, 6-year-old Trentyn and 3-year-old Auztin — went to a foster home, eight miles away in Greenville.

Brown said she has been sober for 18 months. She attended a few counseling meetings every week for more than a year and spent a month in structured treatment at an Appleton facility. Her children visited once or twice a week, but they weren't reunited until earlier this year.

In a recent interview at her home in Appleton, Brown's eyes filled with tears as she remembered the moment she got her children back.

"It was breathtaking," she said. "I’m just so grateful."

Even when parents get treatment, the future of families affected by drug addiction can feel uncertain. Brown still worries about falling back into addiction. She worries about her children going down that path, too.

“If I keep living the way I’m living today, I can be the example,” she said. 

Drug involvement under-reported

At least 7,390 children were separated from their parents last year in Wisconsin, according to reports from county social workers. That’s the most since 2007. The role of drugs in those separations isn’t always clear because social workers typically note multiple factors — even broad ones, such as neglect or child behavioral problems.

That has led many social workers to suspect drug abuse is under-reported as a factor.

Tracy Puent, child welfare manager in La Crosse County, estimated more than three out of four cases there involve some type of drug abuse, despite the fact that, since 2009, the county’s social workers gave that reason in fewer than half of separations. An official in Racine County dismissed the county’s tally of drug-involved family separations entirely, explaining the numbers were entered by staff unfamiliar with the cases.

Kevin Brennan, a child welfare manager in Brown County, said social workers typically see multiple issues — mental health, finances or housing, for instance — in addition to drugs.

Cases involving drug-addicted parents create significant problems for social workers because they often take longer to resolve as parents struggle through recovery and work toward providing stability, said Joe Scialfa, a spokesman for the state Department of Children and Families.

The risk of relapse is real for parents struggling with addiction, so much so that social workers plan specifically where children should be dropped off if a parent is about to fall back into drug abuse.

"We don’t want to set them up to fail,” said Byer, the Marathon County social worker. "We need to have a plan in place so if they’re going to use or relapse, the children are safe."

Is $6 million enough?

The stories of drug-addicted parents quickly turn from heartbreaking to tragic.

Kovach, the Portage County social worker, was involved in a case with a woman who was driving with her two children when she pulled to the side of the road and died from an overdose. The woman’s children — the oldest, a girl, was only about 3 or 4 — waited in the car until someone happened to notice and called police.

Three parents in Milwaukee County were charged after the overdose deaths of two children, a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old. A woman in Dodge County was charged after being accused of crashing her car while she was on drugs with her 3-year-old in the vehicle. A man in Waukesha County was charged with child neglect after his 8-year-old son called for paramedics, afraid his father had died from an overdose.

"My dad's dead," the boy said in an emergency call that attracted national attention. "He's not waking up or anything."

This year’s push to boost state funding for child protection services gained steam from an opioid task force formed by Gov. Scott Walker. Citing a "significant surge in casework due to opioid-related child welfare cases," the group recommended in January that state officials help counties hire more social workers.

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Nearly 50 counties adopted resolutions requesting almost $8.5 million in additional funding over the next two years to beef up staffing, according to the Wisconsin Counties Association.

In February, Walker proposed hiking state support by $6.25 million over the next two years for 71 Wisconsin counties not including Milwaukee County, which is a separate division. The Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee supported Walker’s amount in May and rejected a bid by Democrats to provide the full $8.5 million the counties requested.

The state budget awaits full legislative approval and Walker's signature.

Foster parents give 'entire heart'

Brown, the recovering addict and mother of three, still goes to two meetings every week and frequently talks to her sponsor, while she also sponsors two other women herself.

She ends each day by writing a list of five things for which she's grateful and then sends the list in a text message to a few other recovering addicts, who do the same thing in return.

“It’s so easy to focus on the negative versus the positive in any situation, especially in addiction,” she said.

The foster parents who watched her children remain a part of their lives. They all get dinner together occasionally.

"Family is what you make it," Brown said. "They’ve been such a huge piece of my sobriety."

Many counties described having to constantly be focused on recruiting foster parents to care for children separated from their parents.

Lexi Wood, a Green Bay resident, has been a licensed foster parent more than three years. Wood has cared for 10 children during that time and all have, at least in some way, been affected by drug or alcohol abuse.

“They’ve lost the freedom and joy and innocence that just comes with being a kid,” she said. “You’re trying to introduce them to a childhood that they’ve never experienced.”

Wood has been caring for a 7-year-old for about three years and took in a group of three siblings — ages 10, 4 and 2 — just a few months ago. She knows someday they'll likely be reunited with their parents. That's the goal, Wood said, but it's not always easy.

“You need to be willing to give your entire heart to these kids knowing at some point they will leave your home," she said.

Treatment takes time

The primary focus for social workers involved in drug cases is getting parents into treatment as soon as possible, Kovach said. That’s not always an easy suggestion to make after parents already struggling with addiction lose their children.

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Many social workers and others involved recognize the trauma inflicted on children separated from their parents, even in instances of neglect. Portage County Judge Thomas Flugaur, who spent years as the county’s juvenile judge, recognized how widespread the issue had become.

"The bond between kids and their parents is incredible," he said. "Parents can literally abuse their kids and those kids will still love their parents."

Most parents recognize they have an addiction and aren’t making the right decisions for their children, Byer said.

"They want to be parents," she said. "They just need more help."

Chris Mueller and Keegan Kyle are reporters for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. They can be reached at cmueller@gannett.com and kkyle@gannett.com. Follow them on Twitter @AtChrisMueller and @keegankyle.