County to Consider Addict Treatment Reforms

A county task force searching for ways to help tens of thousands of children raised by drug-addicted or alcoholic parents will present its recommendations to the Board of Supervisors today, but many participants said they doubt the board will find the money to fund their reforms.

Some members of the Task Force of Alcohol and Other Drug Affected Parents--appointed by the Board of Supervisors six months ago--said their recommendations call for publicly funded drug treatment on demand for any parent hooked on drugs or alcohol, a costly effort that would require a substantial increase in drug treatment budgets.

Still, some were hopeful that many of the recommendations would be approved.

“I think this could get some really neat stuff off the ground,” said Department of Children and Family Services Director Peter Digre.

Among the ways the task force hopes to help these children:

* Every county agency dealing with parents or children must ask a common set of questions to try and determine if a parent is an addict. By December 1999, the task force wants parents entering any publicly funded office--health clinics, job assistance centers, welfare offices--to be asked a series of subtle questions aimed at finding substance-abusing parents and their children.

* A wide-ranging public education campaign to tell people how to recognize suspected child abuse and neglect and how to report it to the county’s child abuse hotline (1-800-540-4000).

* As the county identifies more addicts, the task force recommends that child welfare authorities and law enforcement agencies file information about substance-abusing parents to city attorney offices, and that they, in turn, file misdemeanor child endangerment charges against the parents. The task force believes that it can use the threat of prosecution to push parents to stay the course with treatment programs mandated by child welfare agencies.

* To prevent substance abuse, the task force outlined a plan with the county health department to expand a small nurse home-visitation program to 300 families from 100. The program targets young women pregnant for the first time, using a specially trained nurse or community worker for three years to help the mother change health behavior, child care practices, and improve family planning and vocational and job strategies.

Digre said he hopes that these and many other recommendations would be approved by the Board of Supervisors today.

“I want them to adopt this, and tell us to get busy. And check back periodically to make sure we are doing it,” Digre said.

The task force, comprised of representatives from more than two dozen county departments and other groups, was formed by Supervisor Mike Antonovich after The Times’ two-part “Orphans of Addiction” series in November. The articles chronicled the tremendous toll on youngsters growing up with mothers or fathers hooked on speed, heroin and alcohol.

The task force constituted one of the most extensive government efforts to help children of drug addicts and alcoholics.

Nonetheless, many task force members were pessimistic that much would come of their efforts. Some said they fear that board members won’t ramp up their own funding or acquire additional state and federal money to help addicts, an unpopular and politically weak group. They fear that their report will land where so many others have gone before: the dustbin.

“I don’t think in the long run this will amount to much. This will probably get buried someplace,” said task force member Kathleen West, of the California Women’s Commission on Alcohol and Drug Dependency.

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West said she feels that way because the group never included many heads of county departments with the clout to make things happen.

In Los Angeles County, substance abuse treatment funding rose from $79.6 million in fiscal 1996-97 to $84.9 million in the current fiscal year. But spending would drop next year under the current budget proposal--to $83.6 million. Most of that funding comes from the state and federal governments.

The county’s contribution to these programs over the last three years has fallen from $9.7 million to a proposed $2.4 million. Some task force members said this pattern shows that the board does not consider treatment a high priority.

Today, nearly 1,000 people are on waiting lists for substance abuse treatment in Los Angeles County. Experts estimate that the county needs twice as many drug treatment programs for substance-abusing women with children.

Studies show that an untreated addict can cost taxpayers as much as $90,000 a year in welfare, medical care, law enforcement and losses resulting from crime, eclipsing the $21,000 annual cost for long-term residential treatment.

At any one time, the task force said, about 15% of American families--about 150,000 families in Los Angeles County--have a parent who is grappling with alcohol or drug addiction.

While touting the proposals, some members of the task force criticized the report as far too timid in detailing the costs involved. The report does not ask the board for any meaningful amounts of money.

For example, if reforms were implemented, how many more substance abusers might be identified and what would it cost to treat them? The report doesn’t say. The sweeping proposals probably would require more social workers to monitor newly identified substance-abusing families and their children. Yet the report asks for almost no funding from the board to carry out any of its proposals.

Digre said the county has little discretionary funds it can allocate to drug treatment, and that he hopes to liberalize California’s Medi-Cal health insurance program to include more drug treatment. Joel Bellman, a spokesman for Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, agreed. Between 85% and 90% of the county’s $13.2-billion budget is spoken for--mostly by state and federally mandated spending, Bellman said.

“You can’t do this with no money. This doesn’t come free,” said Penny Weiss, a task force member and assistant director of the L.A. County Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect.

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Others in the group argued that the task force, now made up of volunteers, could never press forward and implement reforms without a staff dedicated to the task, and a Board of Supervisors that clearly places the issue near the top of its priority list.

“There needs to be an increase in [substance abuse] treatment and money has to be found for that,” said Weiss. “Finding that money is the responsibility of the people who govern the county.”