FIGHTING FOR FAMILIES

SHELLY Zwijsen has been planning this Mother's Day weekend for a long time.
A trip to the park, ``Spider-Man'' and Chinese food. The hard part will come
after dinner, when she'll kiss her children goodbye and check herself back
into the halfway house where she's working to kick her drug addiction.

Next Mother's Day, she plans to be clean, sober and living with her family
full-time. If she makes it, she'll be another success story in Santa Clara
County's family drug court.

Studies show that when parents abuse or neglect their children, four times
out of five either Mom or Dad has a substance-abuse problem. For years,
courts have routinely taken children away from drug-abusing parents, usually
forever. But when parents lose their kids, everyone loses. Kids wind up in
foster care or are adopted by strangers. Parents are left with feelings of
loss and failure. And the already overburdened child welfare system gets
more cases.

There's a better way: Help parents get off drugs and deal with the problems
they took drugs to forget, such as violent relationships, childhood trauma
or mental illness. It won't always work. But even if it works some of the
time, it will save money on foster care, which is very expensive. And it
will save families, which are priceless.

That's the philosophy behind Santa Clara County's Juvenile Dependency Drug
Court, run by Superior Court Judge Leonard Edwards. It is one of about 30
family drug courts in the country. Only highly motivated parents are chosen.
Since it opened in 1998, more than 150 parents, mostly mothers, have
participated. About 75 have graduated. Ten dropped out and the rest are
still in the program. About 70 percent who stick with it get their children
back, compared with fewer than 50 percent of those outside drug court.

When Zwijsen showed up in Edwards' courtroom last October, she was about to
lose custody of her two kids, now ages 4 and 6. Police had found her using
PCP while the kids were in the house. Under a 1997 federal law, parents have
one year to get clean or face termination of their parental rights. If the
child is younger than 3, the parents only get six months.

The law was intended to save kids from years of custody limbo. But a year
isn't much time to kick a drug habit, so the court has to work quickly,
throwing a team of professionals at each case.

The team gathers for a brown-bag lunch before court each week to discuss the
40 or so cases on the calendar. There are social workers, mental health
counselors, domestic violence counselors, drug treatment counselors, welfare
caseworkers, attorneys for the kids, attorneys for the parents and attorneys
for the social workers.

In court, Edwards is the supportive father figure to the clients, praising
them for clean drug tests and regular attendance at 12-step meetings, gently
chastising them for missteps, urging them not to give up on themselves.
``You've made so much progress,'' he tells a woman who's discouraged because
she can't find an apartment. ``These problems we're talking about are a lot
better than the problems you used to have.''

Watching it all are the ``mentor moms,'' veterans who graduated from drug
court, got their kids back and now help other addicts.

Barbara Bond is Zwijsen's mentor. She's been clean for nearly four years,
and still grapples with how much her addiction cost her.

``My kids used to say I was like Medusa when I was using,'' she said. ``I
tell the women to do this while their kids are little, so they won't miss
out on so much.''

The beauty of the drug-court concept is that it's not just about drugs.
Edwards recognizes that drug treatment is just the front door, the way to
get to the other problems that tear families apart.

``Sobriety and parenting are not necessarily consistent with each other,''
he said. ``But parenting will flow after you've taken care of yourself.''

Sometimes parenting doesn't flow. Some people unsuccessfully fight addiction
their whole lives, others don't bother to fight. We can't let kids spend
childhood waiting for sober parents. But if the alternative is broken
families and more children in foster care, then it makes sense to give
parents a fighting chance.