Anita Harrison

Women come in, their children up to the age of five.

Some could have multiple children, so they can come in pregnant and two or three children under the age of five.

And when the woman comes in here, they're able to get their treatment programme, which is a very structured, intense programme.

It is an intense programme.

But in the meantime, their child attends our early year service.

So our early year service is on site in Ashley House.

And every one of those children have their own key person.

So they have their own key worker.

because a lot of our women have came from very traumatic circumstances.

So a lot of the children have also experienced a lot of the life before the woman came in.

So the staff are absolute angels.

Just the love, compassion they have for not only children, but the women, and wanting to work with both.

We could fill this ten times over.

A huge barrier to women accessing treatment is a choice.

Do I choose to put my child into the care system or do I address my addiction?

Unfortunately, what we have is we have thousands and thousands of women all over Ireland

They hide their addiction.

They hide it from state bodies, they hide it from their neighbours, they hide it from their families out of massive fear of their child being removed if people were to find out about, you know, maybe how bad their addiction is.

So they just, they remain hidden.

The really, really unfortunate thing, so does their children remain hidden.