‘These people are miracles’: Butler County’s family drug court celebrates one-year milestone

One year after the Butler County Family Treatment Drug Court reopened, it celebrated by “transitioning” its first client — a young woman who has been drug-free for a year-and-a-half.

It was all smiles and applause Friday afternoon as the magistrate, the family drug court support team, fellow addicts and others celebrated Megan Franken’s transition out of the program.

“On paper, when I first read about you Megan I had my doubts,” said Kelly Schlessman, the assistant prosecutor assigned to Franken’s case. “She’s got a lot of history, she’s got a lot of work to do. When you walked into this courtroom, you never looked back. You’ve been working hard this whole time … We’re just really proud of you, and we will miss you because you are a role model.”

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The family drug court was re-started one year ago after too many parents were falling victim to the heroin epidemic, officials said, clogging the county’s children services agency. With many adoptions occurring because of parents who can’t stay off drugs, Children Services, the Juvenile Court and mental health and addiction board decided to resurrect the family drug court that closed in 2012 when funds dried up.

Juvenile Court Magistrate Pat Wilkerson, who runs the court, said the past year has been successful and expects it will be celebrating more “transition” milestones in the next few months. The court does not call it graduation because that connotes something is final, but recovery is for lifetime, officials said.

“We’ve got a number of people with significant clean time,” Wilkerson said. “I think in the last three months I’ve bought three different cakes for clients who reached their one-year clean time. We make a very big deal out of that.”

In the beginning the court convened once a week with Wilkerson, all five of the clients, and a plethora of lawyers and social workers.

There are now a total of two dozen clients — they are not called defendants in this court — and dockets three days a week.

The court is operating on a five-year, $2.1 million federal grant and the hope is to eventually help 45 to 60 addicted parents at a time, officials said.

The program is voluntary and lasts between 12 and 14 months.

In addition to intensive drug treatment programs — largely paid for with Medicaid dollars — the court helps parents wade through legal problems, get and keep jobs, overcome transportation issues and a host of wraparound support programs.

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“One of our primary goals is to keep people engaged in treatment long enough that they can start seeing changes and benefits,” Wilkerson said. “When you start seeing that kind of clean time, these people are miracles, especially given some of their backgrounds and trauma histories and things like that.”

Franken was one of the first clients to join the program after she lost custody of her son. Last fall during one of the court sessions, Franken — very pregnant at the time — brought a poster in with pictures of her son. She told the magistrate all about her son, including that he likes eating ketchup on all his food.

Wilkerson asked her what she has learned.

“I lost everything in 15 minutes,” Franken said. “I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was. You really do have to avoid old people and places.”

Franken had already been in another program started in 2015 by Butler County Commissioner Cindy Carpenter called Motherhood and Maternity Addiction Services (MAMAS). The program included not only residential treatment, but recovery housing, life skills training, help with getting a job, and support system from a program called Nurturing Every Step Together (NEST), among other services.

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Franken still failed.

She said she had been clean for six months, had her son back, but she fell off the wagon and used again. While the MAMAs program had resources in addition to drug treatment, Franken said what she ended up really needing was the court setting and its accountability.

“ … having the power of a judge that’s on your side, wanting the best for you, not to punish you…” she said was key to her success.

She now has custody of both her children.

“(The family drug court) was much more involved than just getting clean from drugs,” she told the Journal-News. “It’s healing all the aspects of my life that still needed work … It put more puzzle pieces together than just the drug treatment part of it. If I don’t fix why I’m using I’m just going to keep using.”

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