TOLEDO, OH (WTOL) - The opioid epidemic is making an impact on kids in Northwest Ohio.
"We've gotten the reports that children have been exposed to the product when it's just been left laying around," said Lieutenant Bobby Chromik with the Lucas County DART Unit.
Lucas County Children Services said a ten-month-old died from an opiate overdose in November of last year.
Generally, the agency is not seeing a huge number of kids getting into their parents' stashes lately, but the impacts are still being felt in many other ways.
"We've had them as young as five or six tell DART officers 'this is how mom or dad or whoever, puts the needle together and this is how they inject it," said Chromik.
Children are also finding their parents unresponsive from an overdose. It's a traumatic experience the DART Unit and Children Services are now working together on.
Lieutenant Chromik said the Children Services Board will be adding an employee to the DART Unit all to help families who are plagued by the opiate crisis.
"We have a CSB DART officer and he or she will be going out to engage with families and working with the DART Unit, so we're kinda covering that piece together," Chromik said.
Interviews for the position are already underway. Lieutenant Chromik hopes to have that officer with his team next month.
The foster care system is currently still inundated, but the goal is to help addicts recover and families reunite.
The road ahead is still a long one as Chromik said there's no peak in sight yet for this crisis.
"This last week, I think my officer in the last 48 hours went to at least 12 overdoses and we lost a number of people over the weekend too," Chromik added.