Foster Homes Learn About Caring for Baby Addicts

Merry Lloyd looked down at Rusty, the tiny foster infant she cradled in her arms. Although the “drug baby” was hooked to a device that monitored his breathing, Lloyd carried him to the foster parent training class with her.

Rusty, which is not his real name, was sleeping peacefully. But a few hours earlier he had given Lloyd the scare of her life when the apnea monitor to which he is almost always attached went off, emitting a sound she describes as “much like a smoke alarm.”

Her first reaction was panic. But “you panic and you keep moving,” she said.

Like many other babies, Rusty was born a drug addict because of his mother’s substance abuse.

Severe Withdrawal

Drug babies experience severe withdrawal and, like other medically fragile babies, face life-or-death situations almost daily. Foster parenting is difficult by itself, but coupled with an infant who must struggle hour by hour to live through each day, the task can easily become overwhelming.

To help foster parents deal with such problems, Citrus Community College in Glendora recently held a “Medical Module,” a series of classes at the Duarte Public Library that teach foster parents how to care for some of the special problems that plague medically fragile infants.

Citrus is part of the San Gabriel Valley Consortium for Foster Parenting. Other community colleges in the consortium are Mt. San Antonio College, Pasadena City College and Glendale Community College. The consortium was formed in 1985 as a way to educate foster parents, said Elizabeth Baxt, the consortium’s coordinator.

“Foster parents are professionals who are taking on the same job institutions would have done,” Baxt said. “Some are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, but goodness of the heart is not enough. They need a basic level of training.”

Medically fragile children have conditions or symptoms that require special treatment. The classes deal with the physiological problems for which they carry a higher risk, such as AIDS, drug addiction, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder and sudden infant death syndrome.

The problems have physical reasons or result from their parents’ actions. Los Angeles County must find foster homes for hundreds of such babies each year.

Such problems can discourage or frighten potential parents. Developers of the classes hoped they would educate San Gabriel foster parents about medically fragile babies and reduce their fears.

About 35 foster parents attended each of the four classes. While some of the participants already were caring for such children, many were only considering whether to do so.

Foster parents are not required to take the classes, although those who want to be licensed to care for these infants are required to have individualized training, said Barbara Uchida, administrator for foster professional support at the county Department of Children’s Services.

‘They Need Love’

Modean Johnson of Pasadena said she was taking the classes to prepare for caring for such babies.

“You don’t want to jump into something and don’t know what you’re doing,” she said. “I want to prepare myself and to get familiarized with the situation.

“They need love and so many are thrown away. Parents don’t want them; society doesn’t accept them. I want to make them feel like they’re somebody,” Johnson said.

Because fragile infants have so many health problems, there are not enough foster parents to take care of them. Those who have made a career of foster parenting admit that it takes a special person to take care of such babies.

Bill Whitehead, who with his wife, Shirley, won the 1988 Foster Parent of the Year Award from the San Gabriel Valley Foster Parent Assn., said that although he took the classes to learn more, he would never be able to take in a medically fragile infant.

“I could never handle that,” said Whitehead, who lives in West Covina. “You have to be a special person with lots of patience. I could never take a baby and have it die on me. I’d always wonder, ‘Did I do something wrong?’ It takes a strong person.”

A friend of the Whiteheads, Mary Mihalka of Covina, is such a person. During the class on drug babies she told of the grief and bewilderment she felt when the baby she had been caring for died last summer, the only death in her 20 years of being a foster parent to more than 60 children. “She was terminal; there were too many physical problems,” Mihalka said. “She was lethargic and couldn’t see or hear . . . a vegetable.”

“I would like to forget it,” Mihalka said. But in spite of the painful memory, she and her husband, Ed, continue to take in fragile babies.

“It’s great to watch them develop,” Mihalka said, “especially when someone like the doctor says they won’t last. I get them home and I say, ‘Oh, yes you will.’ ”

Odds Against Infection

Placement of medically fragile babies, especially those who are drug-addicted, is difficult because some foster parents are afraid that they may contract the AIDS virus, which may be transferred to children born to mothers using intravenous drugs.

In the class on acquired immune deficiency syndrome, many foster parents expressed those concerns.

Guest instructor Dr. Bernard Tegtmeier, of the City of Hope National Medical Center, acknowledged that many babies born to intravenous drug users will develop AIDS, but said the chances of foster parents contracting the virus from them is “one in a million.”

“If I’m going to worry about the one in a million chance, I might as well give it up; the odds of walking across the street (safely) aren’t that good,” he said.

“In a number of studies where patients and families were followed from 6 months to 2 years, there has never been an instance where AIDS was transmitted to a family member, unless there were sexual relations involved,” Tegtmeier said.

He cautioned the foster parents, however, that they might want to use precautions such as wearing gloves when dealing with body fluids that contain blood.

Foster parents already caring for children at risk for the AIDS virus said that while they are concerned, they plan to continue caring for those children.

“If my children have AIDS then I have AIDS,” said Betty Carpenter, a foster parent of six children in Palmdale. “The possibility (of contracting the disease) is always in the back of my mind, but it doesn’t stop me from functioning as a parent.”

In the class on drug-addicted babies taught by Anci Rakela, an assistant nurse manager at USC Women’s Center, foster parents learned of the withdrawal symptoms to watch for when caring for babies who may be drug-addicted. Foster parents were also reassured that the babies’ difficult behavior is not a reaction to nor a reflection of their parenting skills.

Drug-addicted babies often have acute symptoms of withdrawal--vomiting, diarrhea, irritability and seizures--that are difficult for foster parents to deal with and painful to watch, Rakela said. The symptoms last from three months to a year.

Because the babies are so hard to handle, foster parents may often feel like failures when drug babies don’t respond to their affection, Rakela said.

Smile as Reward

One foster parent readily agreed. “You put so much in and when they give you that smile . . . those are your rewards,” said Mary Randall, a foster parent caring for three fragile infants in San Gabriel.

The classes give her a better knowledge of the problems she is dealing with, Randall said. “I attend almost every class I can. . . . It’s so rewarding to be able to do something for these kids who need you.”

Lloyd, who has three other foster children at her home in the San Fernando Valley, said she and her husband, Rodney, took Rusty home after he had been hospitalized for about three months. “No one else would take him,” Lloyd said.

In addition to being emotionally difficult to care for, the babies’ medical costs, although paid mostly by Medi-Cal, can become exorbitant. Foster parents often pay expenses not covered by Medi-Cal.

For example, Rusty, whom Lloyd rushes to appointment after appointment, “is well on his way to becoming a million-dollar baby,” Lloyd said.

As an added incentive, the county reimburses foster parents of medically fragile infants at a higher rate than other foster parents. According to a Department of Children’s Services directive, the rate begins at $261 above the basic monthly rate of $294.

But foster parents say the money is barely enough to pay for the children’s food and clothes. They express a personal desire to take care of these infants, regardless of how much money they receive.

In spite of the hardships and uncertainty of survival, many foster parents, like Lloyd, want legal guardianship of their medically fragile foster children.

In the county, about 30% of these foster parents either adopt or gain legal guardianship of the children, said Donna Haas, a supervising children’s social worker with the Department of Children’s Services.

“It’s very common,” said Ray LaMotte, the department’s news media director. “The idea that the child is medically fragile is (secondary). A bonding occurs.”

Lloyd agrees. From the moment they met in the hospital, Rusty became part of her life. “As far as I’m concerned,” Lloyd said firmly, “I held him and he’s mine.”

Diane Jackson, the Citrus Community College facilitator, hopes that more foster parents such as Lloyd will come out of the classes willing and able to care for medically fragile infants. Citrus College is planning its spring semester of foster parenting courses, Jackson said.

“We are aiming to educate foster parents so that they all are adept at caring for these infants.”