Pubdate: Sun, 28 Mar 1999 Source: Washington Post (DC) Copyright: 1999 The Washington Post Company Page: C01 Address: 1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071 Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Author: Sari Horwitz, Washington Post Staff Writer FOR SOME BABIES, A QUEST FOR HOME It was a sultry summer evening when a 30-year-old woman checked into Greater Southeast Washington Hospital to have her baby. She had been using drugs -- crack cocaine and PCP -- during her pregnancy, and now her contractions were coming fast and furiously, two months early. Her little girl, later dubbed "Baby K" by a social worker, was born with a long list of ailments. She weighed 1 pound 14 ounces and was addicted to crack from Day One. The mother was released a few days later, but for several weeks, the infant had to stay in an incubator, where she suffered through a painful withdrawal from drugs. She also had to gain weight before her mother could take her home. But the mother never came back. She became part of a disturbing trend that child welfare advocates have documented in recent years at D.C. hospitals: troubled mothers who wander into maternity wards, give birth and then abandon their babies. In the last 22 months, 61 babies have been abandoned by their mothers at D.C. hospitals, according to hospital records. Sometimes the mothers just slip out of the hospital about the time they and their babies are scheduled to be released. But in most cases, the mothers leave before their babies are medically ready to be discharged and then don't return for them. "This is clearly a major family health crisis," said Vincent C. Gray, former director of the D.C. Department of Health and Human Services and now executive director of Covenant House Washington, an organization for at-risk youths. Thomas C. Wells, executive director of the Consortium for Child Welfare, a group that helps find homes for the abandoned babies, said, "It's incredibly sad to think of the sense of complete hopelessness a woman must feel when she leaves her child at the hospital without intending to go back." The Abandoned Babies Permanency Planning Project is the newest dimension of the District's child welfare system, an attempt to immediately find permanent homes for newborn babies abandoned at hospitals and keep them from being placed in a group home as a "boarder baby" or languishing in the city's troubled foster-care system. "That's the most damaging thing the system can do to them," said Claire Riley, a creator of the project. "These babies need to be moved from the hospital to the last place they will go." Under D.C. law, a baby is considered abandoned if the mother doesn't return or make contact with the hospital within 10 days after the baby is ready to leave. The reasons for abandonment tie into myriad social factors -- poverty and desperation, homelessness, criminal convictions, domestic violence and mental illness -- according to statistics gathered by the project. But in the great majority of cases, substance abuse is a factor. "The mothers don't think like other mothers," said Elizabeth Siegel, counsel for DC Action for Children and a member of the advisory board of the abandoned babies project. "These mothers are not maternal. They're interested only in crack." Statistics for babies abandoned at area hospitals outside the District are murky. There is no suburban equivalent to the abandoned babies project that gathers hospital data on such infants. Spokesmen for Prince George's Hospital Center, Arlington Hospital, Shady Grove Adventist Hospital, Washington Adventist Hospital and Inova Fair Oaks, Fairfax and Alexandria hospitals said no babies had been abandoned at their facilities in recent memory. One former drug addict, who asked not to be identified, said mothers who abandon their babies typically are "going through hell." Another, Cheryl Hall, 44, a recovering drug addict and former D.C. resident now living in Maryland, agreed. "When you get on drugs, you only care about one thing -- getting the drugs. You don't care about anything else, even a baby." Hall said she left her children with a relative while she enrolled in a drug treatment program. D.C. social workers lament the lack of coordinated services to help troubled mothers, especially the scarcity of drug treatment programs. It's a serious problem for many women screened by D.C. General Hospital social worker Barbara Bowman. "The city definitely doesn't have enough drug treatment programs for mothers," Bowman said, especially ones that will allow single mothers to bring their young children. Gray said a new plan by Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) to allow people to use Medicaid for drug treatment could be a step in the right direction. Williams's proposal would increase access to substance abuse services for 65,000 current Medicaid enrollees and about 39,000 newly eligible people. Bowman and the nurses at D.C. General see the largest share of the city's abandoned babies. Since June 1997, 22 babies have been abandoned at D.C. General, while 16 have been left by their mothers at Howard University Hospital. An additional 23 babies have been left at other D.C. hospitals; 13 babies have been abandoned elsewhere in the city. "It's heartbreaking," Bowman said. She is rarely surprised, however, by which mothers leave the hospital without their babies. Red flags go up among hospital personnel, Bowman said, when a woman arrives in the maternity ward and has been using drugs, is homeless or living in inadequate housing, has not had prenatal care, does not appear to have plans or support systems for parenting the baby, or has other children in the foster-care system. But Bowman said there is nothing that she or other hospital workers can do to force mothers to take their infants home. In some cases, they believe the babies would be better off if their mothers did not take them home. "Children should be in homes where they are loved and taken care of," Bowman said. National figures on abandoned babies are several years old. A 1993 federal study found that over a one-year period, 12,000 infants were abandoned in hospitals by parents unwilling or unable to care for them. The study also counted about 10,000 boarder babies. Federal officials define boarder babies as children younger than 12 months who remain in the hospital beyond the normal date of medical discharge; they may eventually be released to their biological parents or put into alternative care. Abandoned babies are defined as those who are unlikely to leave the hospital with their biological parents, who are unwilling or unable to provide care. The District had the third-highest number of abandoned and boarder babies, behind New York City and Cook County, Ill. (Chicago). Given its population, the study indicated that Washington had a disproportionately high number of such abandoned and boarder babies. The mothers of abandoned children in the District rarely are teenagers; in the last two years, most were 30 to 39 years old, according to hospital data. After a baby is left 10 days beyond his medical discharge date, city investigators begin searching for the mother. Sometimes the mother can't be found. City social worker Angie Boone recounted a recent case in which a mother at Providence Hospital gave a false name, address, Social Security number and phone number to the hospital. "It was impossible to find her," Boone said. If the mother is found and doesn't want her child, social workers ask her to relinquish her rights to the baby. Abandoned babies project Executive Director Ava M. Imhof said the group, created with a $200,000 contribution by the Alexander and Margaret Stewart Trust, has forged an unusual alliance with city lawyers, judges, social workers and hospitals. They work together to quickly find adoptive homes so abandoned infants can begin bonding with a new parent right away. In contrast, the 3,253 children now in the District's foster-care system languish there for an average of 3 1/2 to four years, more than twice the national average. During that time, children can be bounced from home to home until officials find them a permanent place to live. A recent report from a group that monitors the city's foster-care system indicates that although the city is far behind in placing foster children in permanent homes, the abandoned baby project is catching children as they hit the child welfare system and quickly placing them. Last December, six abandoned babies were permanently placed with families. Many of these children grow up with behavioral and medical problems and special education needs. Baby K, who was exposed to drugs in the womb, is one of those. Social workers eventually found her mother. She had given birth to seven other children she had abandoned, one of whom died. After a judge ruled Baby K had been abandoned and took away the mother's parental rights, the infant was transferred to the Hospital for Sick Children. A nurse there fell in love with the tiny girl, who struggled to breathe. Doctors warned the nurse not to get too attached. The child would never walk, they said. The nurse was convinced that with time and love, she could make a difference. After special training to learn how to care for the child, she and her husband took the baby home. The child's adoption is about to become final. One day this month, inside a split-level brick home on a quiet Fort Washington cul-de-sac, a 2-year-old girl in a blue and pink jumpsuit ran and played. She peeked through the lace curtain, looking for her daddy to come home. She bounced on her bed near a closet full of pretty dresses and a pile of colorful toys. Baby K, whose real name and those of her adoptive parents are being withheld to protect their privacy, now lives with the 45-year-old nurse and her family in Maryland, where most of the District's abandoned babies are placed. She requires 24-hour care and has a long, hard road ahead of her, including a fourth surgery scheduled for spring to try to improve her breathing. She wears a small, white, plastic device on her trachea, but her eyes twinkle as she runs into her new mother's arms. "She keeps me going," the mother said. "She's a joy to raise." Meanwhile, babies continue to be abandoned at D.C. General. A tiny, 5-month-old girl lies listlessly in a swinging chair. She wears a denim dress with pink, frilly booties and a white bow in her hair. But all that can't mask the trauma she has suffered -- exposure to an array of drugs before she was born, and then abandonment by her mother. The girl cries out. A nurse tenderly picks her up. "It's going to be okay," the nurse whispers, kissing the child and hoping what she says is true. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake