 Effects of Opioid Treatment Programs on Child Well-BeingLindsey Rose Bullinger, Vivian Wang and Kenneth A. Feder The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2022, vol. 703, issue 1, 79-105 Abstract: Children exposed to parental opioid use disorder are at an elevated risk of maltreatment. We study whether parents’ access to medication-assisted opioid treatment programs (OTPs) affects the well-being of their children. An administrative decision to lift a moratorium on access to these programs in Indiana created the opportunity for this study. We show that after a county opened an OTP, methadone dispensing increased and emergency department visits related to opioid overdose decreased there, offering evidence of the success of these programs. We also show that the opening of these OTPs did not have significant effects on reports of child maltreatment, but that out-of-home foster care placements were reduced by 22 percent. Our findings are consistent with past research showing that child welfare cases involving parental substance use tend to be complex and tend to have longer times to parent/child reunification than child welfare cases in which substance use is not present. We argue that expanding access to opioid treatment programs may help reduce foster care placements. Keywords: child maltreatment; foster care; parental opioid use disorder; medication-assisted treatment; opioid treatment programs (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:anname:v:703:y:2022:i:1:p:79-105 DOI: 10.1177/00027162221142644 Access Statistics for this article More articles in The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science |
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