The numbers tell a story that policymakers refuse to hear. Across the globe, millions of children grow up in households that parental alcohol and drug use ravages. In Australia, 1 million children live with at least one adult battling addiction. Furthermore, the European Union counts 9 million children with parents who have alcohol problems. Similarly, the United Kingdom harbours 2.6 million children of school age living with parental alcohol problems, whilst in the United States, more than 10% of children live with a parent struggling with alcohol use.

These are not merely statistics. Instead, these are children whose fundamental rights to safety, stability, and a childhood free from fear face systematic violation whilst society champions the “right” of adults to use substances without consequence. 

The Carefully Curated Cover-Up

The Victorian Auditor-General’s recent report on kinship care reveals not through what it examines, but rather through what it deliberately excludes. Specifically, the audit was “at pains to ensure” that only a “harm management” process review took place. Consequently, the audit precluded the sources and origins of harm that necessitate Out of Home Care (OOHC).

This represents carefully curated obfuscation, essentially a systemic avoidance of identifying and addressing the source of initial abuses and neglects that place children in harm’s way. Moreover, the report discusses finding “stable homes” for children, yet the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) has not determined what a stable placement is, has not collected baseline data, and has not assessed its progress against intended outcomes.

Here is what we know about stability: substance use does not make for a stable home in which to raise healthy and psychologically sound children. Nevertheless, this truth, however inconvenient to current policy trends promoting “harm reduction” and decriminalisation, remains inescapable.

Parental Substance Abuse Child Neglect: The Evidence Linking Substance Use and Child Harm

The Addiction Conference Revelation: At the 2022 Australia and New Zealand Addiction Conference, Odyssey House presented findings that should have reverberated through every child protection agency: “Every Drug Rehabilitation programme must see drug use as Family Violence. These go together.”

The Causal Versus Correlate Smokescreen: Pro-drug and alcohol-defending advocates often wield the “causal versus correlate” debate to diminish substance use culpability. Essentially, they inform us that at worst, substances merely correlate with child abuse. However, we have enough data on record to know that alcohol and other drugs involve themselves more often than not in the frequency, intensity, and ferocity of abuses that adults inflict on children.

The Statistical Reality: The evidence is overwhelming. In the United States, mothers convicted of child abuse are 3 times more likely to be alcoholics, whilst fathers are 10 times more likely to be alcoholics. Additionally, more than 50% of all confirmed abuse reports and 75% of child deaths involve the use of alcohol or other drugs by a parent. Meanwhile, in Europe, 16% of all cases of child abuse and neglect are alcohol-related. Furthermore, children are 52% more likely to have anxiety or depression when both parents regularly consume alcohol.

The Alcohol Availability Connection: A groundbreaking study from Ohio State University demolished any remaining pretence that substance availability and child harm are unrelated. Specifically, research in Sacramento, California found that having one more off-premises alcohol outlet in a census tract related to 13.5% more substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect and 10.5% more entries into foster care. Moreover, a 1% higher per capita volume of alcohol consumed in a neighbourhood related to 3.2% more children entering foster care due to alcohol-related concerns.

Professor Bridget Freisthler, the study’s lead author, stated clearly: “We have to pay more attention to how the supply and availability of alcohol has an impact on child maltreatment if we want to make a real difference.”

The Push for More Permission: Yet as evidence mounts, pro-drug activists push for decriminalisation and “permission models” that would extend the same protections currently enjoyed by alcohol to cannabis, cocaine, mushrooms, and crystal methamphetamine. Indeed, the Kincare industry in South East Queensland is reportedly “booming” because ice impacts parents’ ability to care for their children. Consequently, the insanity of promoting permission models for substance use whilst children suffer cannot be overstated.

(complete expose) : https://wrdnews.org/parental-substance-abuse-child-neglect-the-kincare-crisis/)