Gov. Tom Wolf is expected to sign legislation Thursday that would close a loophole in a 2015 state law and assure that newborns exposed in the womb to narcotics prescribed to their mothers do not fall through the safety net created to keep them safe after they go home.
Both the state House and Senate last week passed a bill that would fix exemptions in Pennsylvania’s Child Protective Services Law and spell out new guidelines for handling referrals through child welfare and health care providers. It’s a move that child advocates have been urging for the last two years.
“Our goal is to make sure that everybody in our Commonwealth, in particular our infants who are born dependent on opioids, are given the best chance for a better life; that means that their mother receives treatment and the infant receives the treatment that may be required as well,” said Sen. Judy Schwank, D-Berks.
At least five newborns in the state have been diagnosed daily with signs of narcotics withdrawal, known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, in the 162 days since Wolf declared a state of emergency in response to the opiate and opioid epidemic. The Jan. 10 declaration made NAS a temporary reportable health condition in the state.
Wolf on Thursday renewed the declaration for another 180 days.
The new legislation comes days before a June 30 deadline to comply with the federal Child Abuse Protection and Treatment Act, or CAPTA, or risk losing $1 million in federal child welfare funding. The 2003 federal law requires states to develop policies to assure that all newborns with prenatal narcotics or alcohol exposure, or who show signs of withdrawal, have a plan of safe care in place before they are discharged from the hospital.
Pennsylvania’s law specifically exempts referrals for drug-dependent children up to age 1 who are born to mothers who took prescribed narcotics as directed under medical supervision. Those include opiate-replacement drugs commonly prescribed to heroin users during pregnancy, and can result in withdrawal symptoms in newborns.
The legislation was added as an amendment to a House bill sponsored by Rep. Tom Murt, R-152, of Hatboro, that requires Pennsylvania schools to prominently display a poster containing the statewide hotline number for reporting suspected child abuse and neglect.
The amendment requires health care workers report Pennsylvania children under age 1 who are identified as being affected by prenatal substance use or have withdrawal symptoms, and specify that the notification is “not deemed child abuse.” The change removes county child welfare agencies as the sole agency responsible for conducting immediate safety and risk assessments and developing safe care plans, though they will continue to handle referrals until new guidelines are released sometime later this year by the departments of Health and Drug and Alcohol Programs.
The delay in changing the law has centered on drafting protections that do not unintentionally punish the mother with a substance abuse disorder, which discourages those women from seeking prenatal care and drug treatment, according to advocates.
Cathleen Palm, founder and executive director of the Center for Children’s Justice in Berks County, is part of a state work group helping draft those protocols. She called the legislation creating a standardized protocol combined with a public health approach a huge step in the right direction to protecting babies and connecting their families with social and behavior services.
“The way the law works now, it’s child welfare or nowhere and that is the problem. We know one reason people were not putting infants and families on the radar is because it felt the only door that would open was the child welfare door and people so disliked that it was the child welfare door,” she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment