unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org (unitex) (09/24/89)
Tragic Toll on Children
Posting Date: 09/24/89 Source: UNITEX Network, Hoboken, NJ, USA
Host: (201) 795-0733 ISSN: 1043-7932
From UNICEF:
Crack and poverty have fueled an explosion in the number of
children neglected or abandoned by their parents and have driven
infant mortality rates in the city's poorest neighborhoods to
Third World levels, statistics released yesterday show.
About 3,000 babies were born addicted to drugs last year, triple
the number three years ago, according to the Mayor's Management
Report.
"Imagine the terrible suffering these babies must endure," Mayor
Edward I. Koch told a news conference as he released the report.
"Many will die. And those who do not will almost surely be
developmentally impaired and will grow up under the very bad
care of drug-addicted parents."
The number of children removed from their parents and placed in
foster care is expected to top 50,000 in the fiscal year ending
in June, double the number a year ago and triple the number two
years ago, city statistics show. Drug-addicted parents are more
likely to abuse their children, experts say.
The explosion in foster care is also fueled by a program begun in
1987 that gives cash payments to blood relatives who care for
children. More than 10,000 children are now in "kinship foster
care," and that number is expected to double this year, said
Human Resources Commissioner William J. Grinker.
The program was intended to give aunts, grandmothers and other
relatives the same benefits that non-related foster parents have
in caring for neglected or abused children. Instead, it has
given poor parents powerful incentives to abandon their
children, Grinker said.
A typical welfare grant for a child living with its natural
mother is $ 170 a month. The grant for a foster child living
with an aunt or grandmother ranges from $ 355 to $ 483 a month.
"There are some very strange and perverse incentives here which I
think we have to examine," Grinker said. "There's an incentive
for the mother to give up responsibility [because foster care
payments are] . . . substantially higher than what welfare would
been."
Infant mortality rates, too, are increasing because of crack and
poverty. The rate for the city was 13.4 per 1,000 in fiscal 1988,
up from 13.1 in 1987 and well above the national average of 10
per 1,000.
Infant mortality rates in Central Harlem, Fort Greene, and Red
Hook were more than 20 per 1,000, four times the rates of the
Upper East Side in Manhattan or Forest Hills in Queens. The poor
neigbhorhoods have infant mortality rates comparable to those of
Trinidad and Tobago.
"Cocaine is the No.1 cause of infant mortality," Health
Commissioner Stephen Joseph said in an interview at City Hall.
"Infant mortality is a function of poverty and social
disorganization."
Crack, a smokable derivative of cocaine, has devastated families
in a way that heroin never did, largely because women are more
likely to use it than to use heroin, experts say.
The total number of children in foster care now includes children
living with relatives who have been licensed as foster parents.
As, projected, HRA had 35,000 children in foster care at the
close of fiscal 1989. In fiscal 1990, HRA projects an additional
15,500 children, to bring the total caseload to 50,500
SOURCE: Mayors Budget and Management Report
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