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http://www.stopinjusticenow.com/News_0596.htm
Sharon Simms was brought up in care and started abusing drugs at the age of 12 in a children's home. Addicted in her 20s and early 30s to crack cocaine and alcohol, she saw three of her children taken away by social workers, the youngest just days after she was born. Her story is far from rare. District judge Nicholas Crichton, who deals with care cases at Wells Street family proceedings court in central London, has seen mothers lose child after child to care through addiction problems. One mother had an almost unbelievable 14 babies removed. Each time she gave birth, her baby was whisked away. But for Simms, from west London, losing her baby was the catalyst for her decision to change her life. She went on a residential treatment course, came off drugs and got her children back. She now works with others who are trying to beat addiction and will soon become a "mentor mum" in the first family drug and alcohol court in the UK. The court, which is formally launched today and starts work in January, is based on a model which has proved successful in the US in helping parents fight addictions and keeping families together. The £1.34m initiative, backed by Camden, Islington and Westminster councils in London, will offer mothers threatened with losing their children the chance to tackle their addiction with the help of health professionals and support workers. Most of the funding comes from central government, with £450,000 supplied by the three councils, where two out of three care cases are linked to parents' substance misuse. The programme will run as a pilot for three years at Wells Street court in the West End, where Crichton and his colleague, district judge Ken Grant, will preside over the cases.
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