Mothers in addiction face more stigma and barriers to treatment
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The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Jonathan Healy in for Clare. On this Friday morning, patients of addiction services used to be majority male, but rehab facilities are seeing an increase in female clients and as a result, more mothers than ever before. But mothers in addiction face more stigma and barriers to treatment that may keep them and their children in the throes of addiction for longer. Newstalk's Sarah Madden reports on those who are trying to change that. And a warning before we start, this report talks about drug use and addiction.
This is our group room and this here is our philosophy. We say that every morning in morning focus and we all stand around in a circle and we put our hands around each other and it kind of just gets you up and running for the day. I just find this is where the magic happens.
It's a Friday morning at Cool Mind Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centre, Ashley House, and resident Danielle Gann is taking me on a little tour.
What challenges do mothers in addiction face?
We, as clients in here, we run the house. Oh, OK.
Does that mean you're doing the cooking?
Yeah, we do all the cooking.
OK, who's the best cook? Me. Today, she's all smiles. But just a year ago, things for Danielle were very different.
I lost absolutely everything. My family was gone. My family house was gone. I was left on the streets in Liverpool with a suitcase and only that I got through to a friend of mine and she told me that she was working in Kilmine in Ashley House and my journey started from there.
Danielle is part of a growing cohort of women seeking treatment. And like every other woman here at Ashley House, she's also a mother.
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.
Anita Harrison is the Deputy Head of Services at Coolmine.
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.
Ashley House offers gender-specific treatment to mothers in addiction and recovery. But other than its sister facility in Limerick, it's the only mother and child residential treatment centre in the country.
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. It's like a double hidden harm. So for a lot of our women, many of the women, if you spoke to them today, would say, unless Ashley House is here, that they could bring their child, that they would have never put their hand out to seek treatment.
There's only 10 mother and child apartments here, but other barriers keep addicted mothers from seeking treatment.
Shame, guilt, that fear of not being able to be a mother to them. It was very overwhelming.
Edie started using drugs when she got back together with her children's father in her early 20s.
So I started on heroin and then I ended up being on methadone. I was also doing coke in between over the years, cocaine. Then I started on crack cocaine.
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