On any given day, as many as 70 percent of the Illinois children in foster care are in that situation, at least in part, because their parents abuse drugs or alcohol.
Only a small percentage will ever be reunited with their parents.
A five-year study by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, involving 1,300 parents of 1,900 children in foster care in Cook County, found that having such a coach does make a difference for a small but significant number of families.
The parents in the study who were assigned coaches "got into treatment more quickly, completed treatment at a higher rate, were more likely to get their children back, and were less likely to have a subsequent allegation of maltreatment," according to Joseph Ryan, the study's principal investigator.
Because fewer children spent less time in foster care, Ryan said, the intervention also saved the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services about $5.6 million over the five years of the study, conducted between April 2000 and June 2005.
He present his findings March 10 at the University of Chicago at a working symposium titled "Accepting the Challenge of Substance Use in Family Reunification," funded by DCFS and attended by its director, Bryan Samuels.
The study was done in connection with a federal waiver giving the state temporary authority to redirect child-welfare funds.
One-third of the parents in the study were randomly assigned to a control group, which had access to substance-abuse treatment but did not have recovery coaches.
"The idea is to sort of chip away at solving the problem of substance abuse in child welfare.
The study found that the existence of those co-occurring problems, along with a lack of progress within those problem areas, appear to be the two factors limiting or obstructing the reunification process, Ryan said.
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