For pregnant women, pandemic made hunt for drug rehab harder

Sims, a 28-year-old from North Carolina, was forced to confront her heroin addiction like never before when her drug use was reported to child protective services last summer.Social workers urged her to go to rehab, but none of the services were adequate because most substance abuse programs consider pregnancy to be high risk.

The Associated Press sought the number of babies who were exposed to drugs in all 50 states between 2018 and 2020 to assess the pandemic’s toll on families and found that most child welfare agencies are only beginning to grasp the problem of drug use among pregnant women. “The severity of substance use has increased markedly since the pandemic,” Jones said of her client base. “That’s really scary.”

“The federal changes haven’t really translated to local action,” said Dr. Stephen Patrick, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Child Health Policy who is a top national expert on drug-exposed babies. “States are kind of confused on what’s supposed to be done and missing the broader picture.” The effort to support moms wanting to get sober is rooted in decades of research showing the lifelong consequences of removing a baby — especially if they show no signs of being affected by the mother’s drug use — and negative outcomes for children stuck in the overburdened and expensive foster care system.

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