The Daily Times

Kathryn O’Day, Tennessee Department of Children’s Services commissioner, visited the New Hope – Blount County Children’s Advocacy Center in Maryville on Wednesday.

Gov. Bill Haslam appointed O’Day to the position in January. O’Day has been touring the state and gathering input about what the department can do better.

“People have wanted to let me know their views,” she said. “They have been very open about that. ... This department is undergoing a top-to-bottom review.”

Representatives of the New Hope board of directors and the law enforcement community attended the informal meeting.

“I appreciate we have a place like this to work together,” O’Day said of New Hope. “We really are better together than individually.”

New Hope, founded in 2003, serves the community by investigating child abuse, educating the public and raising awareness about the issue. It works with the Department of Children’s Services, the Blount County district attorney general, juvenile court officials and others.

State Rep. Art Swann, R-Maryville, expressed a concern to O’Day about the lack of mandatory drug testing for newborns whose mothers test positive for drugs.

“There is an issue that exists where a mother that is on drugs goes into a hospital, has a child and they don’t test the child,” Swann said. “There is nothing that happens there that ought to happen.”

These children will need help at some point, he said. “They are going to flow into the system somewhere. We all need to talk about how we best deal with that.”

O’Day said universal screening has been discussed in other states and that there were pros and cons. “You want to detect these children, and you want to get them early on. (But) it can discourage some of (the mothers) from prenatal care and other attention,” she said.

At the moment, it’s left up to the physician. “It’s really a judgment call from the medical profession at the time they are seeing the mother and the child. We think that these problems occur everywhere. It is something we really need to give some study to in Tennessee.”

Another issue that needs to be better addressed is children who are being born exposed or addicted to prescription or other drugs. Alcohol remains the biggest problem, O’Day said.

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