‘I AM going to be one of the ones who makes it. I am a very determined person and there is too much to lose if I don’t.” Simone is nearing the end of a six-month residential programme in Ashleigh House, Ireland’s only mother and child drug rehabilitation facility.
In seven weeks’ time, she will leave to settle into a new home with her three children. Her youngest, six-month-old baby Ella, is looking angelic despite being awake most of the night with an angry tooth.
Simone is tired but clearly smitten with her daughter and glad to be able to keep her close while she recovers from drug addiction. “It can be stressful because she is up at night teething but I think it is essential that she is here. It is not only good for me, it’s good for her as well. There are so many women out there who are pregnant or have kids and need places like this.”
Simone had just started at a methadone clinic in Hartstown when she found out that she was pregnant. She was shocked but Ella was born healthy, if “a bit small” in August last year. Ashleigh House has given her a fresh start.
“I was at death’s door coming in here. I don’t think you would recognise me if you had seen me walking through those doors to what I am now, I was completely different.
“This programme gives you so much back of what you lose through the years being on drugs. I lost a lot of myself and my personality, I lost my soul basically.”
If the stories of what brought the women here are unhappy, Ashleigh House is a friendly and hopeful place.
It is a small, drug-free community where mothers can be supported while they work through the issues around their addiction. Photographs of children who have stayed here hang on the walls and the second newborn baby to live at the house just arrived at the end of February. There is living accommodation out the back, a comfortable sitting room, a creche and playground.
The Mother and Child Programme was set up in 2008 to make it easier for women with children to get treatment for drug addiction.
Manager Catherine Meleady says many mothers were reluctant to go for help because they didn’t want to be separated from their family.
“A lot of women hid their addiction because they were scared their children would be taken off them. They either had to leave them at home if they were lucky enough to have family members to care for them, or else they would be put into care.”
Although drug addiction is increasing in Ireland and services like Ashleigh House are more in demand than ever, its HSE funding has been cut every year. The programme used to be 18 months long but has been pared back to 12 months because of cutbacks.
While it is the only mother and child centre in the State, no more than five pre-school children can live full-time in the centre at any one time. Staff are trying to secure funding to employ another childcare worker so that more women can have their children live with them, rather than just visiting at weekends.
Fundraising manager Jennifer Donovan says it is a struggle as the centre doesn’t have the budget for a public donations campaign and the stigma associated with drug use is a further obstacle.
Some 14 women are currently living here while they go through the rehabilitation programme, and 11 more are on a waiting list for a place in the house.
The treatment is broken down into two phases; six months living full-time in the centre, followed by a transitional period where they live in community-based housing for a further six months and visit Ashleigh House for regular meetings.
Days at the centre begin early and are highly structured. As well as being responsible for jobs like cooking and cleaning for the community, there is an intensive round of group sessions and counselling to give the women the tools they need to stay drug free after they leave.
There are workshops on relapse prevention, parenting skills, health promotion and social skills, as well as art classes, computer courses and horticultural projects. Former residents say that finding a job is one of the hardest parts of their recovery, so Ashleigh House has a service to help secure employment or further education when they leave.
The programme has some remarkable success stories. Gillian (not her real name) graduated in February 2012 and has managed to completely turn her life around in 18 months.
“I started taking drugs at 13, drinking and smoking hash. I was still going out partying in my early 20s and came across heroin at different parties. I started using and it wasn’t long before I was totally hooked, doing it every day.” She was what she calls a “high functioning addict” and managed to hold down a job. “People have this perception that heroin addicts hang around on corners with their hoods up but that’s not the way I lived my life. I’m from a good family, I always worked and I had a partner who worked. We always had our kids with us but I still needed heroin to get me through the day.”
Today her two daughters are doing well in school and she is waiting to hear back from Trinity College to see if she has secured a place to study there next September. If she had known about Ashleigh House earlier, and that she could keep her children with her while she went through the programme, she would have gone for help years earlier.
“I just felt stuck. You want to get clean but you don’t want to leave your kids. Unfortunately, the funding isn’t there for other places. It’s a pity because women who are in addiction and have kids don’t really have very many options.”
