$2.4 million grant aimed at helping families hurt by addiction

Several northern Colorado agencies will share a federal grant totaling nearly $2.4 million to help the nameless, faceless victims of meth addiction -- children.

The grant will fund the Northeast Colorado Child Welfare Project to help people with any addiction and their families, but methamphetamine will be a prime target because of its widespread use in Weld and Larimer counties.

Social services has to find a permanent home for those children when parents are unable to reunite with them. Island Grove Regional Treatment Center treats the addiction itself, trying to build stability in a person's life when they may have none. And North Range Behavioral Health treats the mental issues that inevitably come with addiction.

"The problems are inextricably intertwined," said Wayne Maxwell, executive director of North Range Behavioral Health. "To have a system where we separately address these problems, it will fail."

Children also often need mental health counseling for any number of problems that can result from having an addicted parent. Those problems can range from nightmares and insomnia to anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome. And because some kids with addicted parents may have a genetic predisposition to addiction or learn the behavior from their parents, treatment is especially important.

"Children who live with parents who are abusing drugs without treatment frequently end up being drug users themselves," Maxwell said.

Children are also often traumatized if they're removed from the home, essentially losing their parents and having to do interviews with people foreign to them, such as police and social workers.

According to Island Grove, services will be provided to 693 children during the three years; 1,000 parents will be screened for substance abuse; 300 families will enter treatment; and 500 staff members from participating agencies in Weld and Larimer counties will be cross-trained.

The people who help everyone affected by addiction hope the grant will allow them to build a continuum of treatment, so the different aspects of treatment can be as intertwined as the problems. And if it works, they hope legislators will take notice and work to provide them with more funding.

"State funding for treating meth abuse is so low it's unconscionable," Maxwell said.

Given how widespread meth use is, the funding could be put to good use. Lt. Steve Nelson of the Weld Drug Task Force told The Tribune in September that most of the meth on the streets is trafficked from Mexico, and it's much stronger and purer than what's cooked in home labs. The task force seized nearly 45 pounds of meth in Weld during 2006 -- a street value of about $1.4 million if it's sold in smaller "eight-ball" increments.

Additionally, Island Grove executive director Kendall Alexander said 860 patients from both Larimer and Weld counties admitted to having a meth addiction in 2005. That number went down to 650 in 2006, but Alexander said the number -- which still comprises 23 percent of the treatment center's cases -- is likely underreported and reflects only a fraction of users in the region.

Weld social services administrator Gloria Romansik said there were 350 dependency and neglect cases open in the courts in September. Of those, just more than half were meth-related. Plus, one case can involve more than one child.

That adds to the challenge of putting the children in a safe, stable home -- preferably back with their own parents. That's especially important when a suitable home can't be found in the child's extended famiily.

"We do search all over the world for someone, but sometimes there just isn't anyone. What we want is to make sure wherever that place is, that it's safe," Romansik said. "Part of that is to make sure we treat the parent for whatever that substance abusing behavior is."

Alexander also hopes the grant will help get a new residential treatment facility off the ground, one where children can live with their parents as they fight their addiction. There is currently a residential facility where patients can live, but children can't stay there. The closest such facility is in Denver. Everyone involved said that facility is another way of maintaining stability.

"Having the resources in your community is the only way to guarantee success if they're going to stay in the community. We need to put all the pieces together without any gaps," said Weld Magistrate Dinn Tuttle, who handles family court cases. Without it, "that's when we have relapse and failure."

The courts and the various agencies had already been trying to work together and streamline the treatment process, said Kelly Schramm, the executive director of the Interagency Oversight Group, which was created to manage such collaborative efforts. For instance, Tuttle can schedule parents for evaluations on their first court date.

"It just cuts down the maze they have to go through to get there," Tuttle said.

Of course, there are still many question marks for the program. The federal funding will only last three years, and the collaborative effort -- both between the agencies and Larimer and Weld counties -- is still in its infancy. But those involved hope the improvements the grant can allow will last beyond that three years.

"As we work together over the next three years," Alexander said, "we're going to get better at what we do."

How the collaboration started

There was already collaboration among social services, mental health and drug treatment professionals, but a federal grant and a bill passed by the Colorado Legislature have helped create parameters and incentives for the project.

The Northeast Colorado Child Welfare Project will have about $2.4 million in additional funding over the next three years, most coming from a federal grant and the rest matched locally. House Bill 1451, passed in 2004, set out to create a more uniform system so that agencies like social services, North Range Behavioral Health and Island Grove Regional Treatment Center don't overlap their services.

The measure added structure by creating an Interagency Oversight Group to set and manage goals, and provides state funding incentives for goals that are met.

BY THE NUMBERS

693 -- Children who will be provided with various services under the grant during the next three years.

1,000 -- Parents who will be screened for substance abuse.

300 -- Families who will enter treatment.

500 -- Staff members from courts, social services, mental health and substance abuse treatment who will be cross-trained in different areas.

$2.4 million during three years -- How much money the collaboration will receive from a federal grant in total.

$473,000 -- How much additional state funding could be received if the agencies meet their goals.

650 -- Number of Island Grove Regional Treatment Center patients who admitted to a meth addiction in 2006.

23 percent -- Portion of all of Island Grove's cases that are meth-related.

45 pounds -- Meth seized by the Weld Drug Task Force in 2006.

$1.4 million -- Street value of the meth seized if sold in small "eight-ball" increments.

350 -- Open dependency and neglect court cases in September 2007. About 50 percent of those were meth-related.