METH EPIDEMIC BURDENS CHILD PROTECTION SYSTEM

ANOKA, Minn. -- For a premature baby delivered by a woman addicted to
methamphetamine, little Logan Meir was coming along pretty well.

Doctors treating his underdeveloped palate had removed the tracheal
tube he was breathing through and had sewn up the hole. If all went
well, he would be ready for adoption in just a few days.

"The doctors say he will never run a marathon or climb a mountain,
but otherwise he should be normal," his social worker, Libbie
Pelletier, told Anoka County Judge Jenny Walker Jasper.

Like most of the cases Walker Jasper handled that day, Logan's
highlighted yet another consequence of the meth epidemic: the drug
has become a huge issue in child protection cases anywhere the drug
has taken hold.

Though national and state figures aren't kept, some Minnesota judges
say as much as 80 percent of their child protection caseload is now
meth-related. Child welfare officials around the country agree that
the meth scourge is responsible for a growing share of their work.

Experts say that's because methamphetamine is so addictive, and meth
users are more prone than other drug abusers to neglect and abuse
their children. Not only do meth users behave erratically, they can
sleep for days when they come off a binge.

"There is no drug better suited to making horrible decisions about
your children than methamphetamine, which keeps you awake for days
and then when you crash it's like the sleep of a coma, during which
you have no idea what's happening with those kids," said Roger Munns,
spokesman for the Iowa Department of Human Services.

In Minnesota, where child protection proceedings are generally open,
Walker Jasper's courtroom is a good place to see the extent of the problem.

On one recent Friday, all but a handful of the 30 child protection
cases on her docket involved meth. In some of the cases, the county
was trying to terminate parental rights. In others, the county was
keeping families under varying degrees of supervision. Some of the
parents got stern warnings that they were on their last chance.

For those who faced their meth problems, Walker Jasper often played
cheerleader. "Your daughter looks just like you," she told a woman
who passed the judge a picture of her children. The woman had
consistently been testing clean for drugs and Walker Jasper was
allowing her more visits to the children, now in foster care. "You
have very cute kids."

Even the judge's docket didn't give the whole picture.

Many child protection cases are handled without going to court.

In Anoka County, close to half the caseload involves meth.
"Forty-nine percent of our child cases today are directly related to
methamphetamine," said Bill Pinsonneault, the county's social
services director. "Three years ago it was only about 3 or 4 percent."

The national picture is much the same. A survey released in July by
the National Association of Counties said 40 percent of child welfare
officials in 13 states reported increased out-of-home placements
because of meth in the past year. And 59 percent of the responding
officials said the particular nature of meth users made it harder to
restore families.

"It's pervasive around the country," said Laura Birkmeyer, chair of
the National Alliance for Drug Endangered Children and executive
assistant U.S. attorney for San Diego. "Every state that is seeing a
large increase in methamphetamine manufacturing is seeing the
concomitant problem of drug-endangered children."

Even where overall child protection caseloads aren't growing,
officials say, the proportion that involve meth is often on the rise,
and those cases are among the most difficult to handle.

Meth fuels domestic violence, and kids can get caught in the middle.
They also fall victim to criminals and predators who hang out with
drug-using parents.

"Those guys can be pretty mean and violent," said Ann
Stackpool-Gunderson, supervisor in charge of child protection for
Isanti County. "Kids will come to school with bruises. We've had
calls to law enforcement from older children -- teens wanting to
protect their youngest siblings."

And then there are people who carry out the dangerous process of
making methamphetamine in homes where children are present, exposing
kids to toxic and explosive chemicals as well as the drug itself.

In Minnesota, court and social services officials say, the problem
seems to be worst in the counties surrounding the Twin Cities. They
include sparsely populated areas where it's easy to set up meth labs,
with metro customers close by.

Between cases, Walker Jasper said that Logan's mother, Michelle
Sydow, once had been doing well in her struggle against addiction.
She'd moved to northern Minnesota to get treatment. She'd gotten her
teeth fixed -- a common side-effect of meth abuse is a disastrous
collapse in dental health known as meth mouth.

"She looked like a million bucks," Walker Jasper recalled.

Sydow should have stayed up north, but she moved back to the Twin
Cities metro area, fell in with her old friends and started using
again, the judge said. Logan was born at 27 weeks -- roughly 10 weeks
premature -- with meth in his system, she said.

Sydow didn't appear for the hearing on Logan, now 2. But she was in
Walker Jasper's courtroom later that day to fight the county's
efforts to terminate her parental rights to her daughters, ages 12
and 6, who are in foster care.

The mother's attorney, Susanne Mahony St. Clair, acknowledged to
Walker Jasper that her client had slipped, but said she had a job and
a home and would be returning to treatment.

The 12-year-old sat in the courtroom, with her own attorney by her
side, but mother and daughter kept their distance.

They exchanged uneasy glances but did not speak as they left after
the judge set a pretrial hearing date for January.

"She's really disappointed in her mom -- and she should be," Walker
Jasper said afterward.