and if they are not doing confirmation tests, they are going to have a lot of false positives,” said Dr. Barry Lester, a national expert on drug-exposed babies and a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Brown University in Providence, R.I.

The Palmdale case comes two decades after concerns about “crack babies” swept tens of thousands of children into child-protective systems across the realm. Today, many sanatory experts say those concerns were overblown, with children showing no correspondent birth defects or brain damage after being born to mothers who tested explicit for crack practice.

But experts say that in recent years a similar sweep has focused on “meth babies.” Up to 80percent of mothers in Los Angeles County whose babies are taken tested positive for methamphetamine, a drug that experts say produces very high rates of false positives.

Removing the child

In Los Angeles County, the number of infants removed from mothers who tested substantial for drugs at hospitals nearly tripled from 209 in 2003 to 568 greatest year, according to county data. California officials reported they do not track resembling figures statewide.

“Nine times out of 10, they remove the child,” said Martha Molina Aviles, deputy to Supervisor Gloria Molina. “So we have been asking the (Department of Children and Family Services) a great quantity more questions about substance-abuse issues.

“How do they test? Are they randomly testing? What kind of tests are they doing? We certainly would support, whenever possible, to do confirmatory tests.”

Under California legislation passed in 1990, it is against the law for a children’s services agency to take a baby from a mother based solely on a single, positive drug test.

The law says there in addition must be proof the baby is at risk of abuse or neglect. And the mosaic code requires hospitals to conduct an assessment of the natural to determine allowing that the baby is at risk before calling children’s services authorities.

Known as the Presley Bill, the legislation came behind a sudden increase in hospital reports to child welfare persons in office of perinatal substance upbraid.

But in a 1994 analysis on benefit of the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, reviewers found widespread misunderstanding of the law, no mechanism to monitor implementation and a lack of funding for nurture or technical support for counties and hospitals.

“It’sitting like the wild, wild West out here,” said Beverly Hills attorney L. Wallace Pate, who is representing the Palmdale couple in their suit against the county.

“Nobody is following the order. The judges have the appearance to be handling these positive toxicology screens like a drug war on women.

“They are telling moms, `You tried positive for drugs, you are a mean mom, and we are going to take your kids away.’ But under the law, the mom has to be abusive or negligent in the care of the baby.”

Principal Deputy County Counsel Rosemarie Belda said she couldn’t comment on the Palmdale couple’session action because it involves pending litigation.

But officials at the Department of Children and Family Services and the Interagency Council attached Child Abuse and Neglect said that, despite the state legislation, hospitals are not consistently filling out the required assessing forms.

“Some hospitals are not submitting these protocol forms at all,” ICAN Executive Director Deanne Tilton Durfee said.

Issue of liability

DCFS and hospital officials repeat physicians have discretion whether to request a second screening test in the place of pregnant mothers who test overbearing with a view to drugs.

But James Lott, executive vice president of the Hospital Association of Southern California, before-mentioned most hospitals in the county are not performing the assessments before calling the DCFS because, if something adverse happens to the baby or the assessment is inadequate, the hospital could exist held legally liable.

“Hospitals don’privately like being put in this position, and in the same state many hospitals will consider the positive science of poisons test all the screening they have to do,” Lott said.

“And that direct be, can be and often is the solitary determinant in love to referrals (to DCFS), and then they let the (child welfare) investigators sort the rest of it out.

“The hospitals are erring on the side of safety in quest of the child. And they could be faulted for the screening process. The only objective, fact-based criteria the hospital has is the toxicology test. Screening can be determined to be belonging to.”

Lott also said he doesn’t believe hospitals are violating the law.

“The law does not say you cannot make a referral free from having terminated the screening,” Lott related. “It says you should do the screening if you are going to make a referral.

“I know that sounds twisted, but anyone can effect a referral without a screening, and it’s up to the investigators to decide (whether to retain the baby).”

Lott also said many hospitals don’t always have the laboratory expertise to conduct confirmatory tests. And while dependency court attorneys say they have been requesting more confirmatory tests not long ago, they acknowledge the practice is still-house relatively rare.

Dr. Charles Sophy, medical director of DCFS, said his agency is concerned that many hospitals aren’t following the rule or performing confirmatory drug tests.

“I think oftentimes hospitals want to err on the side of caution, and as mandated reporters they summons us without any intervention,” Sophy said. “And in some place in the process either the confirmation doesn’t get done or they never get to the nearest step (of assessing the risk of baby mistreatment).

“But the more awareness we can raise, the better most distant we are in terms of keeping families together.”

He also noted his intervention is caught in a tough situation: It must decide whether to detain a baby at the hospital, but can’familiarily require confirmatory tests at that allotted period because the mother is still under the burden of her doctor.

“We can suggest they do a confirmatory test, but they don’t always do it,” Sophy reported. “We don’t be lacking to inappropriately take children from their families. The disruption is not credit it. So we try to confirm as much as we can.”

If the intervention decides to be in favor of a baby into custody, after the originating is discharged from the hospital she often is required to undergo hebdomadal physic testing that serves as a corroborative process, Sophy said.

“I’m concerned there are false positives sometimes, but usually there are more false negatives because of the games people play,” Sophy reported.

“Unless the test is actually witnessed at the hospital, clear as day games can be played to alter the tests. There are all kinds of ways people can change the results.”

But child welfare experts, advocates with respect to pregnant women and attorneys who handle such cases say problems with the system and testing methods are resulting in the unnecessary removal of babies from mothers across the nation.

“Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of families have been undermined by unnecessary child welfare investigations based on nullity more than a choose, unconfirmed drug test,” said Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates notwithstanding Pregnant Women in New York City.

And Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va., said similar systemic problems are found over the nation.

“While it may be deleterious for a pregnant mother to use marijuana or other drugs, it is far more pernicious to that child to have to endure the trauma of sustain feel concerned,” Wexler said.

“This doesn’t mean you simply leave a infant. with an addict. But it does mean that drug treatment towards the mother should be the rudimentary choice, instead of foster care for the child. And those are cases where there really is a problem.”

Maternal drug use

In Los Angeles County, Sophy attributed the near tripling in the number of detained babies to increased drug use by pregnant mothers and a campaign to encourage hospitals to report imperative toxicology results.

Sophy said 70 to 80 percent of the cases have involved mothers who tested positive for methamphetamine use, and he said about 40 percent of the mothers are placed in substance-abuse treatment programs.

“About 40 to 60 percent of them end up back as intact families,” Sophy before-mentioned. “We labor really hard to get these parents connected to services because we want to reunify them.”

ICAN’s Durfee said maternal remedy abuse in Los Angeles County was the leading cause of accidental death in 2006 amidst babies and children younger than 5. There were 25 deaths, up from 15 the prior year. Twelve of the deaths were associated with methamphetamine and 12 with cocaine.

But Wexler and Lewis said researchers also have found it difficult for medical examiners to decide whether the deaths resulted directly from substance abuse or from conditions associated with poverty and lack of care near the front of and after birth.

“I’m not saying maternal drug use is harmless,” Lewis said. “It be possible to have an influence on fetal growth, birth weight and neurological function.

“But we are saying in that place are other influences on fetal growth that may be more costly, in terms of their damaging movables, than physic use.”

Lisa Fisher, spokeswoman for the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs, said in the greatest degree medical and addiction experts now say fears have been overblown about the long-term effects of drug exposure on babies.

“I think a division of rabble would agree with (Lester),” Fisher said.

For Bejarano and Herrera, the research is little consolation.

The day after placing the couple’s children in agency care, Pate said a social worker received results of a background check showing the parents had no illegal or child-abuse history.

The social worker also received test results showing Herrera had no drugs in her system, she said.

Still, instead of returning the children to the couple, Pate said the social worker told the parents Kelly could stay with a relative while they participated in a voluntary family reunification plan.

Pate wrote in the lawsuit that, after the couple refused to take part in the reunification program, social workers filed a detention report with the quadrangle alleging Herrera had used drugs while pregnant.

The trial alleges DCFS filed a fabricated court petition to illegally detain their children based on a false-positive drug test.

In February, a judge found the grounds for detaining the children were not met and ordered their immediate release from foster care.

In late March, the judge threw the subject of discussion out of inclosed area.

Herrera said she is relieved the ordeal is across, but her daughter still has nightmares and wakes up in the middle of the night screaming.

“Is she thinking of when she was in the DCFS car, and the door closed, and she was driven away from us to be placed in a home with a whole bunch of strangers?” Herrera said.

“Now, even if we are right here at the house and hear the doorbell, we jump. Is it a visitor, or is it someone else?”

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