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Officials address cycle of addiction

News & Advance - 1/28/2018

Bedford County

BEDFORD - Community stakeholders in Bedford County are looking to help curb family breakdown stemming from drug abuse by applying to start a Family Drug Treatment Court.

According to information from Virginia's Supreme Court, there currently are two such drug courts in the state: one in Charlottesville that also serves Albemarle County and one in Goochland County.

While the more common Adult Drug Treatment Court model - 33 localities in Virginia currently have them - seeks to break the cycle of addiction for an individual charged with drug-related offenses, family drug courts simultaneously treat parents' substance abuse and provide security in their children's lives, ultimately aiming to bring or keep the family together.

Family drug courts are not criminal courts; instead of being derived from criminal charges, the cases are rooted in families who've come to the attention of the Department of Social Services.

Jennifer Morrow, a family services specialist with the Bedford County Department of Social Services, began researching existing drug courts in July to build a foundation for what a family drug court in Bedford would look like.

Stakeholders who would be involved in a family drug court already were in close communication through meeting groups such as the Bedford Area Resource Council (BARC) and Bedford Community Action Team (BCAT), so Morrow said there already was "tremendous community interest" in trying to set one up. "Bedford County is remarkable to me in the fact that people really want to see a high quality of life for the county and to keep it growing and make it better," she said. "There's a tradition here of hands-on volunteer work, and I think that's what made BAR Cand BCAT get off the ground so quickly."

Community leaders who meet monthly for BARC coordinate on issues like prisoner re-entry, domestic abuse, poverty and servicing at-risk youth. BCAT is a related group that addresses community issues specifically affecting children and families.

That cross-agency collaboration also received recognition from Jennifer Smith-Ramey, outpatient program manager with Horizon Behavioral Health, and Bedford County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge Robert Louis Harrison Jr., who will preside over the drug court if it is approved. "I've always wanted one, and the atmosphere just wasn't right up until now," he said.

If the Virginia Supreme Court approves the drug court, stakeholders are planning to run it as a pilot program with no additional personnel hired on to help.

The stakeholders - who also include leaders from Bedford County Public Schools, the Bedford County Office of the Commonwealth's Attorney, state Probation and Parole and Court Appointed Special Advocates of Central Virginia - would set up a pilot program Morrow said would involve one family at first, going up to three to four families total. The timeline of that pilot program would be from a year to 18 months, reflecting the time limits set in state foster care for either reunification or termination of parental rights.

Any participating families first would have an open case with the Department of Social Services, and Morrow said the children either would be at risk of removal from their parents or they'd already be removed. Their case then would undergo layers of review by the stakeholders before they would complete intake with the pilot program.

Smith-Ramey said treatment services would be planned based on each individual's situation, whether they'd be for an adolescent or parent.

"Our treatment for either scenario always begins with assessment," she said.

Harrison said though Bedford County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court has been drug testing juveniles for methamphetamine for years, it wasn't until 2017 he saw them testing positive - a dozen of them, mostly older teens.

Juvenile drug court, yet another model of drug courts in Virginia, focuses on delinquent youth with substance-abuse issues. But Harrison said he sees more need to reach children at younger ages and treat the family as an entire unit.

"When we met, everyone at the table agreed that if we were going to do it, a family drug court was the only thing to do," he said. "... One of the things we were doing before, we realized, is we were trying to cure the family through the child, and you can't do that."

Morrow said the tendency to abuse drugs can cycle down through generations, too - to the point where families who've been drug-involved for generations sometimes are seminomadic, without stable housing or work.

"We're also seeing that ... some children not only observe their parents substance-abusing but are being introduced to drugs by their parents," she said. "So that's another reason why we have to take a family approach."

Methamphetamine in particular has cropped up in notably more Bedford DSS cases in recent years. Morrow said it's much more harmful when used around children when compared to other substances - she favors the term "biohazard" instead of "drug."

Morrow, who has a doctorate in psychology and pictures of drug-affected brains lining her office walls, said it takes months of sobriety following a meth addiction for the brain to fully regain the faculties for word recognition - a challenge she said will need creative problem solving if the drug court is approved. The healing process should fall in line with the program phases families would go through.

"We're not recreating the wheel; we're just tweaking it to be a better fit for Bedford County," she said. "Because there's a lot of good practices out there."

To address transportation issues specific to Bedford and to help fight through the mental "fog" long-term drug usage creates, stakeholders are envisioning a peer specialist and coach who'd also help participating families get to their various appointments. Structure is a hallmark feature of drug courts, and as Morrow puts it, "this is a full-time job."

This would be the first drug court operating in Bedford County. Lynchburg Adult Drug Court started hearing cases on a two-year pilot session in March 2017, and the 23rd Judicial Circuit Adult Drug Court in Roanoke has been in operation since 1995 - the oldest one in the state. Other drug court dockets in and around Central Virginia include Halifax County Adult Drug Court and Franklin County Juvenile Drug Court.

Morrow said Goochland's family drug court is young yet, but Charlottesville's family drug court has a robust docket with participating families in the teens.

Community stakeholders still are reviewing and refining the pilot's blueprints, and Morrow said they hope to submit the application within a few months.

Although it's too early to know the precise role Horizon might take in the drug court if it's approved, Smith-Ramey said the objective is clear.

"Our vision, should this come to fruition, our vision would be that we have less recidivism through the legal system, and we would have higher chance of beingable to reunify and keep families together," she said.

Ideal candidates, Morrow said, perhaps would be parents who've tried to sober up and failed, or those who are sick of a lifestyle bogged down by drug use and don't want to pass that down to their children.

"This isn't a cure, and we're not going to nail it down with that amount of precision - we're just improving the odds," she said.