KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Kristy Blagg sees the increasing effects of the opioid crisis on the foster care system.
“At times it’s almost criminal what they’re going through," she said. "They're getting moved and aren’t getting their essential needs met. And that’s why they’re getting removed in the first place. So that’s why it’s such a huge problem and why we need people to foster.”
Driven by passion, Blagg, who is a foster parent, has taken in her fair share of children. Some for weeks, some for months.
At one point, she had kids rotating out every night because an exception permits kids to sleep on the couch when other beds are full.
Blagg said some kids didn’t have consistent medication or schooling.
“That really weighed on my heart what they’re going through because most of them had been removed due to drug addiction of their parents,” she said.
Her own two adopted kids, now three and five, were born addicted to meth and heroin.
“They were the seventh and eighth children their mother had lost due to drug use,” Blagg said.
The opioid epidemic is adding to the increasing number of kids in foster care each year.
More than 6,500 kids on both sides of the state line in the Kansas City metro are in the system, with thousands less licensed foster homes.
The Missouri Department of Social Services Children’s Division marked a steady increase in the number of drug-related investigations in homes where child abuse or neglect was reported.
In 2008, the number was 1,017. At the end of the 2016 fiscal year, the number was 1,700.
Looking at the numbers at the end of every June from 2012 to 2017, the number of kids in Children’s Division custody went from 1,636 to 1,862.
The number was higher in 2015, when 1,929 kids were taken away from their biological parents’ home.
“Over the last five years, there are some estimates that approximately 80 percent of children who come into care is actually a result of substance use or abuse by a parent or caretaker,” said President of Cornerstones of Care Denise Cross.
The hope for Cornerstones of Care and other agencies is to keep kids with their birth families.
“It probably doesn't happen as often as you would think because the issue around treatment and recovery and access to these resources is not always consistent for those parents,” Cross said.
Cross believes because of relapses and the lack of preventative methods, kids are staying in foster care longer.
This problem touched Blagg's heart so much that now she gets paid to recruit foster parents, looking at her own kids for inspiration.
She said she never sees them as “drug babies,” but just kids who need love.
“I feel really blessed by them every day. We've been given so much in our hearts that I can’t repay that, but now I'll spend my whole life trying to,” Blagg said.
