I have worked with child services for many years. Through the years one of the problems that seems to occur time and time again is head lice. As the years go by we have learned many great lessons on how to best treat lice so that they do not reoccur. It seems that lice remedies come and go and we are learning that lice do become immune to the different treatments, especially if the treatments involve chemicals.
Recently we had a very critical situation occur with head lice in a foster home. The foster family has done care for our agency for many years. The family is licensed for 5 children. They have had a sibling group of three placed with them for nine months. These three children came from very neglectful conditions and were also abused by their mother and her boy friends. After the nine months in the loving structured home of the foster family the children were beginning to laugh and play and behave in healthier ways. The foster family was on call for emergency placements and they were needed to take in a brother and sister whose mother was arrested. There were no other family members available so the children needed to be placed in foster care. They had been found in filthy conditions in a home where drugs were being manufactured. The police brought the children to the foster home at 2:00 in the morning. The foster parents provided clean pajamas for the children and had them sleep in the living room area on the couches until they could rearrange space with the other children. It turned out that the children had extreme cases of head lice. The foster parents did not discover this until the next day when they were helping the children with bathes. By this time the other group of foster children had sat on the couches to watch television and to visit with the new arrivals. The lice quickly spread to everyone in the household. The foster mom called me in a panic because she knew that the shampoo used in most lice remedies would cause the three children to break out because they have severe allergies. She was also concerned about using the lice remedies for the bedding and couches. It was winter time and extremely cold outside. I told them to place the clothing, bedding, couches and pillows outdoors. I then took over the supplies for the latest lice remedies from the public health nurse. This included soaking the children’s hair in olive oil and placing a plastic bag over the hair for several hours. The olive oil smothers the lice. This procedure as with all lice remedies had to be repeated at intervals to kill the eggs that the lice lay in the hair follicles.
After several bottles of olive oil and multiple applications the foster family was finally rid of the lice. They did like this treatment over other lice remedies that they have had to use in the past because they were not placing harsh chemicals on the children.
