Helping the Helpless : The pioneering Hope For Kids offers addicted parents a chance to seek treatment without risking the loss of their children.

Her friends told her it was amazing how well she juggled her life.

At 26, she was a nurse, having put herself through school by working a full-time job. Her apartment was always fastidiously clean. It was rare not to see fresh-cut flowers on her living room table.

All that, her friends said, and she was raising a 5-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son on her own.

Whenever the Ventura single mother heard the praise, she said nothing. There was no way to tell anyone that the picture of her life didn’t exactly jibe with the reality; that each morning when she arrived for work at the hospital, she would slip into a closet and inject Demerol into her arm.

And evenings, as soon as she came home and her baby-sitter left, she would shuffle the children off to bed and begin her nightly ritual of snorting cocaine and drinking until dawn. . . .

I was just falling apart. I tried stopping twice on my own -- I went to work in a clinic where there weren’t any drugs and I started going to AA meetings -- but then I’d work in a hospital over the weekend and steal more drugs. I couldn’t stop.

Someone at an AA meeting suggested that I go into an inpatient recovery program, but I couldn’t do it. I was too afraid to leave my kids. I couldn’t leave them with my family, because my family is really dysfunctional. I found out my stepfather molested my daughter while I was attending meetings.

I wasn’t going to put them in a county foster home, either, because I heard all kinds of terrible things and I was afraid I’d never get them back. I felt so alone. I didn’t see any options.

A Pioneering Concept

In reality, she was less alone than she knew.

According to a 1987 study conducted by the National Junior League, the lack of adequate child care is the No. 1 barrier preventing women from getting help with alcohol or drug addiction. The study also found that fewer than 1% of treatment facilities nationwide allow women to bring their children with them when they seek help.

In Ventura County, only one women’s recovery home allows children. Mothers with more than one child, however, must find other arrangements. There are no men’s recovery homes that will accommodate children.

Confronted with the dismal outlook for parents seeking treatment, two Ventura County single mothers, Marina Ross and Susan Jones, decided to do something about the problem. Both had experienced the difficulties of getting sober while raising children.

The result of their efforts was Hope For Kids, a privately run, nonprofit organization formed in 1988 to help alcoholic and addicted parents who are ready to seek treatment.

Simple in concept and relatively inexpensive to run, the program works on the premise that allowing parents to voluntarily give up their children is preferable to providing foster care only after the children have been removed by the courts.

Parents call Hope For Kids when they are about to enter an inpatient recovery program, at which time their children are placed in one of 13 licensed foster homes throughout the county. Unlike county-provided foster care, which requires parents to meet certain criteria before their children are returned to them, Hope For Kids allows parents to discontinue treatment and still have their children back at any time. They also may visit their children in the foster homes whenever they desire.

Thanks to joint funding from the county’s Public Social Services Agency and the Health Care Agency, foster care is provided free for a maximum of six months. The children and parents take part in weekly counseling sessions that center on alcohol-related issues. The meetings, which take place in the foster homes and outpatient treatment centers, are provided on a sliding scale basis.

The organization is believed by many recovery-related professionals to be unique.

“I don’t know of any program like this anywhere, and not just in California,” said Mark Summa, program assistant with the county’s Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs. “To my knowledge, there’s nothing like it in the entire country. It’s a perfect example of how creative an organization can be in providing for special needs.”

Since its inception three years ago, 65 children have been cared for while their parents--most of them single mothers--received help in recovery homes.

“The women who started this had no one to care for their children while they went for help. And they recognized that if they had, it would have helped them to get out of the hole a lot sooner,” said Diana Vogelbaum, who now runs the organization out of her Ojai home.

“They also thought that their kids would have been a lot less damaged. The longer it takes to get help, the worse things get for the kids.”

I was addicted to crack for five years. I had a 12-year-old, a 6-year-old and a 5-year-old, but I wanted to get pregnant because I thought it would stop me from using. But it didn’t. I kept using. I was really scared.

I did want to stop. I called a lot of numbers, but there was no one to watch my kids. I asked them to help me, but everyone referred me to someone else. About three days after I gave birth, I left my kids with their father, who was strung out on heroin. I went into Primary Purpose, a recovery house in Oxnard. I felt horrible with them there, but I was more scared to have them in protective services. I was afraid it would be years before I got them back. I relapsed after 87 days and stayed out there for three months.

When I finally called Hope For Kids, I was shocked when they said it was OK. Diana (Vogelbaum) came to my house and the foster mother came too and picked them up. I cried and cried and cried. But I knew I was doing it the right way this time. That’s what keeps me sober today. I never want to forget those last days of my drinking and using. It was agonizing. It was so awful.

--Carol Tirado, a 32-year-old Oxnard mother now sober 18 months

Nurturing the Family

The idea that early treatment of parents can have an effect on the outcome of children is borne out by figures from Ventura County’s Department of Children’s Services.

Of the 378 children removed involuntarily from their homes and placed in county-provided foster care in 1990, between 75% and 80% came from households in which there was drug or alcohol abuse, according to Diana Caskey, the county’s foster care recruiter. Of those children, Caskey said, 49% had experienced either sexual, physical or emotional abuse.

Los Angeles County’s Department of Children’s Services estimated that at least 80% of children in county foster homes have come from an environment that involved drugs or alcohol.

“The fact is, a woman will lose her husband, her house and her job and be out there on the streets, but she’ll hang onto those kids. They are the last thing before death,” said Laurie Drabble, acting executive director of the CARA project in Los Angeles, an arm of the California Women’s Commission on Alcohol and Drug Dependency.

CARA--Childcare Assistance for Recovering Adults--is a program that was modeled after Hope For Kids. It hasn’t yet been officially launched because of funding difficulties.

“In Ventura County, I think there is more of a willingness to look at nurturing the entire family system, and this is seen as a component in recovery,” she said.

“Los Angeles County doesn’t see it that way. Here it is viewed not so much as alcohol services . . . but as foster care.”

Several aspects of Hope For Kids, however, separate it from traditional foster care. Perhaps the most important is the knowledge by parents that their children will not be taken away for an unknown period of time.

Another mother shared a similar story:

I have an 8-year-old son, and when I got pregnant everyone wanted me to get an abortion. My mother said I wasn’t able to care for it. I was addicted to cocaine and alcohol. My doctor knew about the alcohol because I told him, but I didn’t tell him about my drug addiction. I was afraid he would judge me. Or that he wouldn’t be my doctor anymore.

I got drugs off the streets at night. A few times my son woke up before I got home and he’d ask me where I was. I lied and told him I just went to the store.

When the baby tested positive for drugs, the PSSA agency wanted me to go to AA meetings three times a week. They said they would take my kids away if I wasn’t making a real attempt to stay clean and sober. I was so afraid. You hear about foster care people and what they do to children. I heard about that on “Geraldo.”

I called Diana (Vogelbaum) and she reassured me about the foster care people. She said they are licensed and that they are screened. On June 28, Diana and the foster mother came to my house, the day I went into Miracle House. I looked at Karna and all I could think was that she looked so young. I thought, “How is someone so young going to care for my child?”

--Elisha, a 31-year-old Oxnard mother, now sober 120 days

Changing the Children

The foster mother who showed up with Vogelbaum was 25-year-old Karna Richie of Simi Valley. Like many of the volunteer parents involved with Hope For Kids, she also has worked as a county foster parent.

“The difference with Hope For Kids is that the parents are trying to change,” said Richie, who is caring for a 4-month-old baby until December.

“The Hope For Kids parents really want their kids. With the county, a lot of the parents never took an interest. I had a child for a year and a half, and I never heard from the mother again.”

Richie eventually adopted that child, who is now 2 1/2.

Another difference, according to Vogelbaum, is that, in addition to county licensing requirements, foster parents in Hope For Kids undergo training in alcoholism-related issues as they pertain to children.

“Children from alcoholic families learn not to talk about feelings,” said Vicki Bradley, a former Hope For Kids counselor who now conducts alcohol and drug prevention classes for the county.

“The unspoken rules are: Don’t trust, don’t talk, don’t feel. Many of them took care of the parents and perhaps other siblings, and most of them have an incredible sense of responsibility for their parents’ being sick. They think if they had been better, they could have done something.”

Vicki Grinolds, a foster mother in Simi Valley who also has worked through the county system, said the extra training allowed her to recognize specific ways she could help her foster children adjust. Right now, she is caring for 4-year-old fraternal twins and a 2-year-old girl, all from the same family.

“When they first came here in September, it was obvious they had had no structure or routine at all,” she said. “They asked why they had to do something, and I said, ‘Because we have rules here.’

“Another thing I noticed was that Tina, the 4-year-old, showed no emotions at all. She wouldn’t cry, she wouldn’t laugh. She never asked for help getting her clothes off to get in the bathtub.

“I’d get up in the morning and the other two would be in bed with her. I found out it was because they’d never had their own beds. And if Ashley, the 2-year-old, needed something, she wouldn’t come to me. She’d go to Tina. Tina had been the Mommy to all of them.”

Grinolds, a warm, cheerful woman, lives in a house filled with nostalgia items from the 1950s. A jukebox plays rock ‘n’ roll for 25 cents, and a Coke machine dispenses bottles for a nickel. The children, she said, have adapted well to their new environment.

Omar, one of the twins, who is in his last phase of treatment for leukemia, is no longer somber and withdrawn, she said. When Grinolds slips a quarter into the jukebox and plays “Step by Step,” Omar’s favorite song by New Kids on the Block, he dances on the living room rug.

“Ashley is doing wonderfully, too, but the biggest change has been in Tina,” Grinolds said. “I saw the same thing happen with another little boy I had and his 17-month-old sister.

“When he came, he would change her diaper and get her bottle. I had to keep saying, ‘Your sister is not your responsibility. Go outside and play or watch TV, and I will take care of her.’ It took a while before he stopped coming inside every time she cried.

“The beauty of it is watching them turn into children again. You get to see the joy return.”

Carol Tirado, who has been clean and sober for 18 months, sees even more:

The kids go to school now every day. We’re working on chores and boundaries. We have a set time for bed and we sit down to dinner together. That was something that definitely was never done before. And I take them where they have to go. Today, my son is going for counseling and my other two kids are going for tutoring.

I’ve even learned how to pray. I ask Him, “What do I do? Show me the way.” I don’t ask for patience, but I ask to be teachable.

I still live in the same house, right around the corner from all the drug hotels. It doesn’t bother me though. I got me a new set of glasses. I don’t see it anymore.

FOSTER PARENTING FACTS

Hope For Kids is looking for foster parents to provide care for Ventura County children while their parents enter drug treatment programs. The maximum length of care is six months, although some placements end in 30 days. Reimbursement for each child is $482 a month.

Anyone interested in becoming a part of the foster parent program needs to do the following to become licensed by the county:

* Attend nine hours of training sessions.

* Provide a room for the child in a home that county licensing inspectors would find safe from such things as dangerous chemicals.

* People who have been convicted of felonies are not eligible. Individuals who have experienced drug or alcohol problems must show that they are no longer substance abusers. In some cases, references may be required.

* Single parents, working parents and senior citizens are welcome to apply.

* Additional training sessions relating to drug and alcohol vary.

For more information, call Diana Vogelbaum, Hope For Kids director, at (805) 649-2949 .