Letter from Destiny
My name is Destiny Harris and I am 20 years old. I tested positive for crack, PCP, and heroin when I was adopted at 8 months old by Barbara and Smitty Harris! When I was tested at the age of one, they told my mother that I would always be delayed because of my prenatal neglect. It turns out that the real neglect occurred in foster care for 8 months after birth. Now I am on the Deans list in College and I owe that to my parents who dedicated their lives to loving and caring for me.
Over the past 12 years my siblings and I have worked with our mother as she goes into the streets talking to addicts across the Country. We have been in all types of neighborhoods with people of all races, and the one thing I have noticed is that the addicts seem to love and respect my mother.
read the entire letterOur Mission
Project Prevention offers cash incentives to women and men addicted to drugs and/or alcohol to use long term or permanent birth control. Project Prevention is a National, 501 (C) 3 organization using your donations to stop a problem before it happens. We have paid addicts in 50 States and the District of Columbia.
Our mission is to continue to reach out to addicts offering referrals to drug treatment for those interested and to get them on birth control until they can care for the children they conceive. We are lowering the number of children added to foster care, preventing the addicts from the guilt and pain they feel each time they give birth only to have their child taken away, and preventing suffering of innocent children because even those fortunate enough to be born with no medical or emotional problems after placed in foster care face often a lifetime of longing to feel loved and wanted
The Sad Reality
The abuse of alcohol and drugs has had a dramatic effect on foster care, particularly in the past 20 years. With increasing frequency, children are coming into care because their parents are addicted to alcohol and drugs. Many children also are born to mothers who abused alcohol and drugs while pregnant. These children often are placed in foster care with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or other drug-related conditions.
Of all the recent trends in child welfare, perhaps none has been more troubling than the increase in cases of child abuse and neglect resulting from parental abuse of alcohol and drugs.
In 1995, nearly
3.1 million children were reported to child
protective services as abused or neglected.
Approximately one million of these reports were
substantiated.
Substance abuse was found to be a
factor in a majority of these cases.
