LOSING A DRUG HABIT TO KEEP CHILDREN

When her husband, David Webb, died of pancreatic failure in 1993, Redia
Esau turned to her sister, Marion Sharpe, for help. Six months later, when
her sister died of an asthma attack while asleep, Ms. Esau had no one left
to turn to, so she turned to crack.

She had gone on periodic drinking binges since she was in her early 20's,
she said, but after her sister died, she needed something more for the
pain. "Alcohol wasn't strong enough to numb it," she said.

Ms. Esau, now 48, used crack from 1994 until 1997. It caused her to begin
to neglect her children, sometimes leaving them alone in the house for days.

In 1995, social workers from the Administration for Children's Services,
the city agency that places children in foster care, noticed that she
needed help. They referred her to the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service,
a nonprofit agency that has a contract with Children's Services to provide
preventive services, like counseling and home visits, intended to keep
children deemed at risk of going into foster care with their parents.

The Brooklyn Bureau, which provided individual counseling and group therapy
to the Esau family at a center in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is one of the seven
local charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.

Ms. Esau began seeing a counselor, who helped her realize that her
addiction was affecting her children. She tried a number of drug treatment
programs, she said, but none worked because the temptation to return to
crack always won out.

"If you're in an outpatient program and you're living in the same
neighborhood where you're getting your drugs, it's only a matter of time
before you relapse," she said.

Another counselor suggested that Ms. Esau look for a detoxification program
in the Bronx, where she would be far removed from the center of her
addiction. But because it also meant that she would have to live away from
her children, Ms. Esau at first refused even to consider it.

For several months she tried to raise her two children, Kami (pronounced
Kee-AM-ee), now 16, and Christopher, now 12, as best she could while
maintaining her drug habit. But eventually, she said, "I could see I was
hurting my children. I was with them, but I wasn't really with them."

Ms. Esau said she thought her children did not know about her addiction,
but her children said recently that they knew of it all along.

"Kids are aware of a lot more than you give them credit for," said Tina
Layton, Ms. Esau's counselor at the bureau. "Once you get it out there it
can be a big relief."

In 1997 Ms. Esau decided to attend a drug rehabilitation program in the
Bronx, Project Return. She asked her mother-in-law to take care of her
children and moved to the center, where she stayed for 14 months.

The children spoke on the phone with their mother every day, but they still
missed her. "It was kind of hard because I couldn't see my mother,"
Christopher said. "I wanted to live with her."

But the children knew that the treatment program was for the best. They
noticed that when their mother returned, she was more attentive to their
needs. "It was a different beginning after all," Kami said.

Ms. Esau completed the program in January 1999 and found an apartment in
Crown Heights that she paid for with the help of the Section 8 federal
housing subsidy. Most important, she got her children back.

And she got a job in customer service at The New York Post. She was quickly
promoted to the circulation department, where she became a data entry
clerk. She vowed to learn everything she could in the department.

Last week, she learned she had been promoted to supervisor. She will earn
$26,000 to $30,000 a year, she said.

As her income increases, Ms. Esau's housing subsidy will decrease, but she
said it was worth it to become self-sufficient.

"I have something now that I didn't have then," she said. "I have
confidence in myself and what I can do."