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Opioid Epidemic is causing more children to go into Foster Care

Brian A. Jackson/Shutterstock.com

          

A recent survey by an Ohio child welfare association found at least half of the children taken into custody last year had parents on who were addicted to drugs.

According to the survey, 75% of the 913 children authorities removed from homes in Cuyahoga county last year due to one or more parents' drug addiction. In 11-percent of those cases, the parents were hooked on opioids says Angela Sausser, Executive Director of Public Children Services Association of Ohio.
The non-profit organization surveyed all 88 county child and welfare agencies and found there are close to 14,000 children in foster care state wide…that is 25-hundred more children than three years ago says Sausser.  And she says the opioid epidemic is to blame.

“They are really in the invisible victims,” says Sausser. “But the one area that has not addressed yet is the impact on children. We are relying heavily on kinship families, so relatives of children, to take care of these poor victim.”

Sausser says there is a need for more foster parents.
In Summit County, 519 children were removed from their homes last year.  About a quarter of them came from parents who were addicted to opioids.