Baby in the Balance

If Stacy Coleman and Keith Cromwell Can Kick Their Habits, They Can Get Their Child Back. A Court Wants to Help.

September 2005

The small blond woman who slumps before Judge Martin P. Welch seems to have been asleep for the past hour.

"Ms. Coleman," the judge says to her, in his gentle way, "I don't want to jump to conclusions, but I have to ask you: Are you high right now?"

"I'm tired. I've been up all night," Stacy Coleman says groggily. "My boyfriend kicked me out."

Her boyfriend, Keith Cromwell, lean and neatly dressed, is also here before the judge.

Welch has their files. He knows their stories. He has taken away so many babies from people like them. Addicts.

Coleman, 28, is a high school dropout with tousled hair and a careworn face. She grew up in Baltimore's working-class suburbs in a family plagued by cocaine and started using at 13. When she got older she danced in bars, hustled for a living. She has had her brushes with the law.

As has Cromwell, 41, a clean-cut high school graduate who grew up in Baltimore public housing, the son of a Vietnam veteran who drank and then disappeared. Cromwell is a steady worker who has had many jobs, a quiet man who struggles with his temper. He started drinking young, got into heroin, then crack.

An unlikely couple perhaps, yet bound by their inheritance, the silent absences and secret customs passed down through addicted families.

And now bound by a little girl.

Keyona Angel Cromwell is case No. 805206001, born July 19, 2005. Coleman tested positive for cocaine, so the baby was placed in foster care.

On this day, Coleman and Cromwell find themselves among the first parents to take part in the Family Recovery Program, part of a growing movement of family drug courts throughout the nation. They are here because they want their baby back and know that conquering their addictions is the only way to accomplish that.

This is an experimental court, and presiding over it is Welch, one of the first judges in the region empowered to order addicted parents into immediate drug treatment with the goal of dramatically limiting their children's stay in the foster system.

In more than a decade overseeing the Family/Juvenile Division for the Circuit Court of Baltimore, Welch has taken thousands of neglected and abused children away from addicted parents.

He has advised those parents that if they want their children back, they need to get clean and sober. But over and over, he has watched them disappear into anger or denial, or into a system with too few drug treatment slots available, especially for the poor and uninsured. And he has watched their children languish for years in Baltimore's troubled child welfare system.

Then in August 2005, government, business and philanthropic leaders announced the Maryland Opportunity Compact, a public-private initiative that earmarked $2.5 million to establish the court's Family Recovery Program.

When the state takes a child from an addicted parent, the judge refers the parent to the program. A caseworker from a private firm under contract to the court assesses the addict's needs and places the parent in a waiting slot for a drug treatment program paid for by the court. In the first year, 185 people will be referred to the program, 81 of whom will follow through to receive some treatment.

The judge meets weekly to discuss their cases with a team of lawyers for the parents and children and with social service providers. Parents appear regularly before Welch in a closed courtroom Friday mornings, maintain steady contact with their case managers and submit urine samples. All the while, the clock is ticking. Decisions must be made.

This is a year when Coleman and Cromwell's baby will begin to communicate, to walk, to bond, a year in which the parents will stumble repeatedly in their struggle to rise from their addictions.

Welch knows relapses are inevitable. He isn't expecting miracles. But if children are to grow up with the capacity to trust and love, they need nurturing families.

If Cromwell and Coleman fail to seize this chance, fail to develop the skills they need not only to raise a child but also to live life clean and sober, the state will move to terminate their parental rights.

Keyona, with her elfin chin and big brown eyes, will be put up for adoption.

"Ms. Coleman, we have to meet each other where we are," Welch tells her. "I'll take your explanation that you are not high, that you are tired. But next month, when you come back, get a good night's sleep. You are right on the cusp."

Tomorrow: Coleman and Cromwell go into intensive treatment and give up their apartment.