'Epidemic' of addicted, negligent parents puts pressure on juvenile office; 2 officers added, official says

Mounting pressures from an influx of drug-abuse victims and sheer workload are affecting the juvenile office, but some help is on the way, one official said at Thursday’s Cape Girardeau County Commission meeting.

Randy Rhodes, chief juvenile officer with the 32nd Judicial District juvenile office, said Thursday that Missouri’s juvenile courts are behind the times.

“We don’t only do the delinquency side,” Rhodes said. “That’s what people think of, but a good 75 percent of my budget, work hours and workforce goes toward the abuse and neglect side.”

If a hotline call comes in from a neighbor who heard screaming children in a house, for example, police respond, Rhodes said.

If they can’t wake up the parents, they’ll enter the home, and if the parents are passed out from heroin or methamphetamine use, the children will be taken into custody.

“The juvenile officer is involved in this state, because we’re the ones that have to file the petition, cut the court order, prepare the court case,” Rhodes said.

A lawyer in his office reviews officers’ reports for legal sufficiency, and if it’s found, Rhodes receives a text, at any time of day or night. He then reviews the documentation, and if he finds legal sufficiency as well, the judge is notified and a court order is requested, he said.

Rhodes, who has been a juvenile officer since 1983, said he’s seen a dramatic increase in the number of cases since 2015.

Before 2015, he said, there were about 100 children in foster care in the three-county 32nd Judicial Circuit, but since then, there are closer to 400.

“This is an epidemic,” he said.

Rhodes said the main culprit is methamphetamine abuse by parents, “but once heroin gets here, it will be even worse, even more coming into my system.”

In response to Presiding Commissioner Clint Tracy’s question as to how other states handle abuse and neglect cases, Rhodes said it’s not a uniform approach, but some states have granted the Department of Social Services the authority to file emergency-custody orders.

Other states have an assigned attorney in the prosecutor’s office to handle juvenile work, he said.

“I just have one working around the clock,” Rhodes said.

“I think it’s a mess,” Rhodes said of the present system, and one Missouri legislators need to address.

But there is some help coming, he said.

He received a letter from the state, dated Sept. 21, allocating two new state-level deputy junior officers to his office, he said.

Rhodes said he writes frequently, requesting grants for training or other budget items, and by their own research and factoring in the workload his deputies have, “I have eight deputies. ... I’m nine officers short.”

He had written a letter in early July requesting more deputies, he said.

The Sept. 21 letter gave no explanation or direction for the two new deputies, Rhodes said.

He plans to use one deputy to work on the backlog of cases where children have been in foster care, but their parents have “basically abandoned” them.

Rhodes said several cases are at or beyond the 12-month point, where parents have stopped making court appearances, for example.

“We need to file petitions, set up evidence, interview witnesses,” Rhodes said, to get parental rights terminated to free up these foster children for adoption.

Reducing the backlog also will help reduce lawyers’ fees in these cases, Rhodes said.

The other deputy junior officer will work on keeping down the number of detained juveniles, Rhodes said.

Linda Nash, executive director for Voices for Children/CASA in Cape Girardeau, said there has been an increase in drug usage in the district, and “when you think about an increase in drug usage, it’s a reasonable spinoff that there is child abuse and neglect.”

The first goal when a child has been taken is always reunification with the family, Nash said.

If the parents are good people who messed up, the court wants to give them a good opportunity to do what they need to do to get their children back, she said.

“If they haven’t done that, the court will start looking in other directions,” Nash said.

Termination of parental rights is a last-ditch effort, Nash said.

“It’s not undertaken lightly at all, as it shouldn’t be,” she added.

In many cases in this court district, Nash said, the juvenile officers are the first responders.

CASA volunteers help children understand what’s happening, Nash said, and impress upon them they are valuable people who have worth, and the things that happened to them are not their fault.

Nash said an important part of the volunteer training is educating them on what the juvenile office actually does.

“Arrest kids in trouble, yes, that’s part of what they do, but they also protect children and their rights and that kind of thing,” Nash said. “We do work very closely with them, children’s division, to try to get these kids in the best place they can be.”

mniederkorn@semissourian.com

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