At her lowest point, Kristen Chilson — all 74 pounds of her — was so thin that her bones hurt when she sat in the bathtub.
At about the same time in October 2004, her children were taken away by state Children and Family Services and put into foster care because her meth use endangered their safety.
Chilson, a former meth mom, has been clean for more than a year after intensive outpatient treatment.
She just got her children back in March, and couldn’t be happier.
Life is “going wonderful,” the 21-year-old Sequim resident said.
“I can deal with things as they come, and reach for the tools that I learned in treatment, like asking for help,” she said last week, sitting outside her mother’s home in Port Angeles with her son, Scott Grush, 4, and daughter, Kira Chilson, 3, playing in the yard.
Chilson is among the dozens of mothers whose children were taken away by Children and Family Services over the last two years because of their drug use — primarily meth, children’s health officials say — and put into foster care.
Parents of 62 children in Port Angeles and Sequim, 17 in Forks and six in Port Townsend had their children put into foster care in 2005 alone, according to state Children and Family Services.
That’s more than double the total in 2004 for Port Angeles and Sequim, and compares with no meth-related foster care cases in Port Townsend in 2004.
There are already 23 foster-care cases in 2006, each of which apply to an individual child, said Maureen Martin, social work supervisor for Children and Family Services in Port Angeles.
Sixteen parents are involved — 10 single moms, one single dad and five two-parent households in Port Angeles and Sequim, she said.
Twenty of the 23 parents are addicted to meth, including a “vast majority” of the single moms, Martin said.
Meth is the major factor in the majority of cases on the North Olympic Peninsula, said Mike Heard, the agency’s regional supervisor for Port Angeles, Port Townsend, Sequim, Forks and Shelton.
“I guess it’s in 70 percent to 80 percent of our cases,” he said.