Child protective services agencies are mandated to help keep families together.
Some women who enter alcohol and other drug treatment programs will be in contact with their local child protective services agency.
These women may not view this involvement positively.
In turn, many alcohol and other drug treatment programs find it difficult to deal with child custody and placement issues.
As a result, some treatment programs exclude women who are or could potentially be involved with a child protective services agency.
Until this circumstance changes, the doors to alcohol and other drug treatment will continue to close on pregnant, substance-using women -- the very women who need to be admitted.
Women should not be barred from treatment or discriminated against because they are pregnant.
It must be recognized that the family circumstances for women may be fluid, rather than static.
Children may be periodically absent and subsequently return to the home.
Furthermore, alcohol and other drug use is a chronic relapsing disease.
Relapse prevention must be an important part of any treatment approach.
Cross-service training of alcohol and other drug treatment staff and child protective services personnel should be supported.
The aim of this joint training is to promote a better understanding of the issues common to both groups and to promote a strong working relationship between these service providers.
The following guidelines address intervention and assessment, placement of children in temporary foster homes, and development of permanent placement plans.
All health care and social service providers should be aware of the relevance of Public Law 96-272, the Child Welfare Act of 1980, for persons eligible for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), as well as Public Law 95-608, the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978, for Native American families.
Responsible efforts should be made to keep children with the biological parents in their own home.
When children are removed to temporary foster placement, reasonable efforts should be made to reunite the families.
When some women enter an alcohol and other drug treatment program, they will already have worked out an agreement about what must be done to keep their children.
A treatment program should not discriminate against women on the basis of such agreements.
However, women should also be informed of the legal risk they face with respect to program reporting policies.
Information exchanged between the treatment program and child protective service agency must adhere to the guidelines on confidentiality.
If the child protective services worker, in attempting to work with the family, finds that the children may be at risk of imminent harm, then court intervention may become necessary (see Placement in a Temporary Foster Home below).
Treatment programs must comply with other laws, such as the Americans With Disabilities Act and the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended.
These laws prohibit discrimination in the use of public accommodations, including treatment programs.
When a child remains at imminent risk of harm despite ongoing work with the family, the court may become involved.
The child protective services worker is usually mandated to involve the court if the child is at imminent risk of harm and intervention services have failed.
Alcohol and other drug use alone, however, should not be the sole criteria for court intervention.
After adjudication, if the court finds the child at imminent risk of harm, the child may be placed with a suitable relative or in a foster home.
This placement outside of the home should not be made until all reasonable efforts have been undertaken to keep the family together.
When the child is removed from the home of the parent, the plan must be to return that child at the earliest possible date when it can be safely undertaken.
To this end, reasonable ongoing efforts must be made to reunite the family as soon as possible.
Under certain circumstances, the court may decide that the permanent plan will be placement away from the natural parent; this may occur after all reasonable efforts have been made to unite the family, when it is apparent that this unification cannot occur in the foreseeable future, and when such action is considered to be in the best interest of the child.
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