To date Indiana has obtained more than $1 billion dollars from the nation Opioid Settlement Funds but none of those funds have gone to supporting the children of addicts as they navigate life without a healthy parent to support their academic or behavioral development. (Getty Images)
In 2017, more than 2.2 million children were identified as having a parent navigating opioid use disorder. In Indiana, that included more than 57,500 K-12 students. Indiana ranked 13 th in the country per capita with 35 of every 1,000 K-12 aged students that had opioid affected parents.
These children are not addicts themselves, but have had a parent who misused opioids, was incarcerated for opioid use, or died due to an opioid overdose. Their parent’s addiction to opioids has left this population of students to be raised by a sober single parent, a grandparent, the foster care system, or some other form of kinship…