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Opioid wave swamps child visitation

CAA will now supervise increasing number of visits as parents lose custody

LISBON –The opioid problem is continuing to create a need for additional local government services, this time because of the growing number of children placed in court custody to protect them from their drug-addled parents.

Columbiana County commissioners on Wednesday gave the county Department of Job and Family Service permission to contract with the Community Action Agency to provide child visitation supervision services.

JFS Director Eileen Dray-Bardon told them her Children Services division has the responsibility of overseeing court-ordered visitation between parents and children who have been taken from them due to neglect. Children Services only has two aides assigned to this task, but the number of active visitation supervision cases has exploded from 60 several years ago to about 100 currently, “so it’s become unmanageable with our staffing,” she said.

Rather than hire additional staff the JFS requested proposals in November, and Dray-Bardon recommended they contract with the CAA, which will provide visitation supervision services through its Head Start program, the federally funded program that provides pre-school services for children from poor households.

She pointed out that Head Start staff members are subject to a criminal background check and Children Services would train them to serve as supervised visitation aides. The plan was reviewed by county Juvenile/Probate Court Judge Tom Baronzzi, who gave his approval.

The supervised visitation will be held at the CAA’s main Head Start location in Lisbon but could be expanded to its other Columbiana County locations in the future. The contract,

which takes effect March 1, is for 19 months and has a contract ceiling of $95,9851, with the JFS using some of its federal public assistance funding to cover the expense.

Dray-Bardon attributed the significant increase in the supervised visitation caseload to the dramatic spike in opioid abuse and drug overdoses, resulting in more children being removed by the court from their parents.

“Most of it’s due to neglect because these parents are so focused on their addiction that they don’t care for their children,” she said.

Last June, the JFS expanded its gasoline voucher program due in part to the increasing number of grandparents who have legal custody of their grandchildren because the parents are non-functioning drug addicts. Some of these grandparents must travel to Akron Children’s Hospital for up to six weeks while their infant grandchild is being treated after having been born drug addicted because the mother used opioids while pregnant. The voucher program is to help the grandparents purchase gasoline for traveling to and from Akron.

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