Home Remedy

By PAUL RAEBURN

Published: May 28, 2006

Three years ago, Mary Beth Towell, a counselor in Canton, Ohio, was assigned to a family in a crumbling neighborhood of dilapidated houses, drug dealers and gangs. Even in that tough neighborhood, this family stood out as desperate. In a single month, child-protective services fielded more than 30 calls from teachers, police officers and others demanding that the children be removed.

The mother had bipolar disorder and was a heavy marijuana user. The children's father no longer lived in the home. Two of the girls, 15 and 10, and a boy, 11, were violent and suicidal. They threatened one another with knives and fought viciously. (The remaining child, a 14-year-old girl, was somehow O.K.)