Drug Addiction Is Sending More Children To Foster Care

(Addiction Center) On July 15 [2024], the academic journal JAMA Pediatrics published a study that examines how drug abuse and the opioid epidemic have strained the foster care system in the United States. The researchers obtained their data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, a federal government information project. Almost 5 million children entered foster care between 2000 and 2017. There are many reasons why the authorities take children away from their parents, including neglect and child abuse. Drug addiction, especially addiction to opioids, is becoming an increasingly common reason parents are losing custody of their children. According to the study, 1,162,668 children entered the foster care system between 2000 and 2017 because of their parents’ drug addiction.

In many cases, state or local authorities determined that the parents were too addicted to drugs to adequately care for their children. Additionally, in other cases, the parents sometimes died from drug overdoses or went to prison for using or selling illegal drugs. In all of these situations, if the parents lacked relatives who could care for their children, their children entered the custody of the state.

In 2000, drug addiction was the cause of only about 15% of foster care entrances. By 2017, that percentage had grown to 36%. While foster care entrances for drug abuse increased, entrances for abuse and neglect declined. The study found that children who entered foster care because their parents were battling drug addiction were likely to be under the age of five. Moreover, while most drug-related foster care entrances happened in the South, the number of such entrances increased the most in the Midwest. The researchers stated in their article that this problem “coincide[s] with increasing trends in opioid use and overdose deaths nationwide during this period.” In Ohio, a state where the opioid epidemic has been especially disastrous, about half of all children who enter foster care have drug-addicted parents.

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