Keeping Rappahannock’s troubled families under one roof
Department of Social Services welcomes substance use support coordinator
The county’s Department of Social Services has taken another step in addressing what had become a dire dilemma.
Because of a drastic shortage of foster care families in Rappahannock, it has had to place almost all of its at-risk children in group homes or therapeutic facilities outside the county — some in locations as far away as Richmond and Roanoke.
But now the agency is getting a hand in the often difficult job of keeping troubled families together.
Earlier this month, Regina Bellamy-Mason joined the effort to help those families stay on track in reuniting, or in avoiding a breakup in the first place.
Bellamy-Mason is part of a program called SUD (Substance Use Disorders) LINK. Her position of “support coordinator” is funded through the Children’s Services Act and overseen by the Rappahannock-Rapidan Community Services Board, but is focusing only on cases in Rappahannock, specifically those where substance abuse is a factor.
Jennifer Parker, the county’s director of social services, pushed for bring
ing Bellamy-Mason aboard after seeing the success of the program in Fauquier County. Substance abuse cases can be particularly complicated, with parents expected to meet treatment goals and stabilize their lives. That can be a daunting challenge.
“I’m a big believer in that when you peel back addiction, you’re going to find mental health issues. I also am a believer that an addict is not going to change until they’re ready to change,” Parker said. “We want them to know there is a person here to support them.”
For Bellamy-Mason, that might mean checking in with a parent every week to make sure they’ve made it to Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings or other therapy sessions, and if not, why not? Was it due to a lack of commitment? Or did they simply forget or just didn’t have a way to get there?
Sometimes, her assistance is more hands-on. Recently, she met in a library with a mother of two children in foster care so she could show her how to apply for jobs online.
THE OPIOID CONNECTION
Although the opioid crisis has not had the same devastating impact in Rappahannock as it has in other rural communities, it has played a role in many of the cases here where children have ended up in foster care.
“There’s no question that heroin is the number one substance in the cases we see, although we’re also seeing alcohol come back pretty significantly,” Parker said. “Cocaine is coming back, too. The pain pills are pretty much gone.”
Currently, 27 Rappahannock children are in foster care. By comparison, about 40 kids are in foster care in Fauquier and Culpeper, counties with 10 times the population. Instead, in those communities, more cases are handled through what are known as “prevention services” — the children continue to live with their parents, but Child Protective Services regularly assess the situation, often as the result of a court order.
Parker explained that prevention cases are rarer in Rappahannock for several reasons. “First, by the time we find out about a situation, it’s already pretty dire,” she said. “Because this county is very much ‘What happens in the family stays in the family.’
Also, she noted, her office doesn’t get the referrals about potential family problems that her counterparts in more populous counties receive from other agencies or social workers. Parker said that by working closely with the new social worker hired by the Rappahannock County School District, she hopes to be able to become more aware of trouble students may be having at home and help keep it from becoming a crisis.
“We want to get out the message to people who may be aware of something bad happening in a home that Child Protective Services can get involved, but not in a punitive way,” she said. “CPS is always viewed as a punitive agency that can take kids away from a family. But we want to get more away from that and work more on the prevention side.”
That’s where Bellamy-Mason comes in, at least in cases where substance abuse is involved. The goal is for her to be able to provide the kind of guidance and support parents with addiction issues need to hold their families together and avoid having their kids placed in foster care.
FEWER GROUP HOME PLACEMENTS
Aside from the social and psychological benefit of keeping more children with their families, Parker has another compelling reason to reduce the number of Rappahannock children placed in group homes. This October, a federal law called the Family First Prevention Services Act goes into effect. Its intent is to discourage the placement of foster children into group homes, and it includes a pretty powerful financial disincentive—the federal government will stop covering the cost two weeks after a foster child moves into a group home. After that, the financial burden, in most cases, will fall on the county where he or she lived.
That was the motivation for the aggressive campaign to recruit foster families in Rappahannock initiated by Parker and Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court Judge Melissa Cupp in February. It was a success.
At the time, Rappahannock had one available foster family; now it has seven families that have gone through training. Parker said another recruitment campaign will start in September.
Still, Parker’s priority increasingly will be on keeping families intact, and fortunately, the Family First act also will shift more federal funding to cover prevention services, such as counseling, family therapy and parenting training.
Relying too much on foster group homes has plenty of ripple effects, she said. For one thing, they are much costlier than placing children with a family or keeping them with their parents.
“We’re also losing families in the county,” she added. “Once these children go into foster care somewhere else, a lot never come back. That’s another thing that helps drive down school enrollment.
“And then you think about a child who has gone through all these disruptions and had so much instability in their lives. Their chances of becoming an addict, of becoming involved in the legal system, of having severe mental health issues go up dramatically.
“And when they age out of the system, where are they? It almost like people who grew up in foster care don’t exist.”