"The Silent Victims of the Opioid Crisis"

 The explosion of addiction to prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl has affected millions of individuals and hundreds of town's across the United States. In it's path, the crisis has left thousands of children of parents suffering from substance abuse stranded on the streets, in the homes of relatives and holed up in government buildings catered for work, not sleep. Between 2012 and 2015, the number of children entering the foster care system rose by 8% (30,000 children) while federal spending for foster children during the same period declined by 2%. In 2014, 40% of children in the foster care system were had parents who suffered from substance abuse. Thousands of children from all across the country are being extracted from their homes at a time when the foster system, strained financially and in its ability to provide housing, is completely unprepared to care for them.

New York Times 

In 2007, Kentucky, where one third of children entering the foster system came from parents suffering from substance abuse, established a program titled Sobriety Treament and Recovery (START) focusing on surrounding parents suffering from addiction with transporation services, mentorship and therapy to help keep families together. While the program is expensive to maintain, it has saved the state money by lowering medical costs focused around addiction and decreasing the number of children moving through the foster system. In recent years, many other states have adopted similar programs but their financial future is uncertain because the majority of addiction related services are financed through Medicaid. Most of these programs work by determining which children reside in households affected by addiction and then sending parents to treatment centerrs where they are surrounded by teams of doctors and mentors who coorindate services for the patients. On top of the foggy financial future of these programs there is often a geographic one given that many communities plagued by the opioid epidemic are in rural areas where many of the mental health and social services required for these programs to be succesful are scarce.


Over the past few years, many states have undertaken policies such as expanding Medicaid and increasing the funding for children services within the state. But in many cases, the amount of money allocated by governments is not enough to handle the growing costs towards the foster system and other services. For example, the Governor of Ohio, John Kasich, recently increased spending for children services by 30 million dollars in the 2018 budget but the child placement into the foster system is estimated to requrie 55 million dollars. . In contrast with many states, federal funding for children services decreased 16percent between 2004 and 2014. Some of these reductions can be attributed to laws mandating that federal payments for children services only be allocated to individuals below a certain income level. However, as we well know, the opioid epidemic has proved to not disciminate along socio economic lines and for most states, the threshold for recieving these funds is well below the poverty line. 

The financial burden of caring for the thousands of children displaced by the opioid epidemic is staggering but it is the governments obligation to provide housing for these children regardless of the financial costs. But I worry that the staggering cost of just providing housing will create a dialogue around this issue that ignores the mental, physical and emotional implications that suffering traumatic experiences at a young age can have on individuals later in life. Studies have shown that children who suffer Adverse Childhood Experiences (emotional abuse, physical abuse, separation from parents and parental substance abuse) are more likely to suffer from substance abuse, heart disease, depression and cancer. As noted in an article for Mother Jones, a child with four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences is twice as likely to develop cancer and ten times as likely to inject themselves with drugs later in life. 


This blog only scratches the surface of the impact the opioid crisis is having on a generation of children across America and how the federal and state governments are failing to handle it. If you would to read more about the consequences that ACE's and parental substance abuse can have on children here is an article in the Huffington Post.