The State now has considerably less patience with parents such as Janet. She won't have an endless supply of chances with her last two children as she did with her first five. That's because several years ago, the legislature passed the so-called "permanency law", a law that speeds up the process of one of the most intrusive governmental acts -- permanently severing contact between a parent and child. Hennepin County Chief Juvenile Judge Charles Porter says the permanency law means parents now have months, not years, to get their lives together or, they lose their children permanently.

"It swung from a position if a parent could still spell and pronounce the child's name, we didn't terminate."

Judges and social workers believe children are seriously damaged when they grow up in a series of unstable homes. Before the legislature passed the permanency law, children could spend up to 10 years in and out of what one judge termed"foster care storage" while their parents underwent drug treatment. By the time the system would declare the parents unfit, the child would be too old to have a chance at adoption.

Hennepin county judge Isabel Gomez served in juvenile court for more than three years. Gomez says she saw the damage done to children who were yanked in and out of as many as 15 foster homes.

"In time we lose fact that a little person who came into the system at 2 and healthy, and at 4 is suffering a lot of stress because he had been bounced around in foster homes then was 6 and suffering a lot of stress because he couldn't figure out why he didn't have a mom like everybody else."

The permanency law has fueled a dramatic rise in parental terminations in Hennepin county. In the past four years, the number of parents losing permanent custody of their children has tripled. David Sanders, who heads the county's child protection and family services agency says crack cocaine-use has added a new dimension to child abuse and neglect.

"Ten or 15 years ago we would've seen children having their basic needs met: sufficient housing, food and the issues and not going to school. now we see circumstances where there is no housing or is clearly inadequate or condemned or no food in the house. We really see a difference in the basic needs and a lot of it is crack usage."

Sanders says the county gets less bang for the buck in treating families where parents are addicted to crack cocaine. More resources go to a family for a longer period of time and there's less chance the parents will get off the drug and stay off.

In Minnesota, those most likely to lose custody of their children are parents like Janet who are poor, with severe drug problems. She, and others like her, now have less time to recover and fewer allowances for relapse. Hennepin county officials estimate between 90-95-percent of parents involved in child protection have drug problems. A high percentage of those, are addicted to crack.

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