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Collaborative Conversations: Supporting Families with Substance Use and FASDs
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A New Way: Reimagining Substance Use Policies to Support Families
Why It Matters
Infants and toddlers are the largest age group in foster care. Parental substance use is one of the leading reasons they enter the child welfare system. Current punitive policies separate families and don’t make babies safer.
Substance use disorder is a health condition, not child abuse. Families need support, not stigma or punishment.
What's Inside
This report offers 10 actionable state policy recommendations to:
- Treat substance use disorder as a health issue
- Expand access to responsive family-focused treatment
- Protect parent–child relationships in the critical early years
- Reduce unnecessary child welfare involvement
- Center parent voice in system reform for all families
Key Takeaways
- Shift the frame: Substance use alone should not be grounds for child abuse or neglect.
- Build supports, not reports: Replace mandatory reporting with pathways that connect families to treatment and help when safety concerns are not present.
- Invest in families: Require insurance to cover the full continuum of SUD care, including family-based residential treatment.
- Embed expertise: Bring infant and early childhood mental health and substance use specialists into child welfare practice.
- Listen to parents: Include lived experience in policy design to prevent unintended harm.
The Bottom Line
States can transform how they respond to parental substance use, from reporting to healing. Doing so supports babies, strengthens families, and reduces child welfare involvement.
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The Safe Babies Policy Team provides research, tools and tailored support for state policy efforts that can strengthen families facing challenges like poverty, housing instability, substance use and mental health concerns.
Webinar
Elevating Parent Voice in the Conversation of Perinatal Substance Use
Join us for a conversation regarding perinatal substance use disorder.
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Webinar
Supportive Care for Perinatal Substance Use
In this webinar, Dr. Kaitlan Baston and Kimberly Nabarro, Parent Leader and Makua Ally, will delve into the stigma and marginalization associated with addiction in pregnancy, and how both patients and medical professionals suffer from the lack of addiction medicine training in healthcare.
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