Lyndsay Fraser says many mothers battling addictions were abused and neglected themselves, but residential care could break the cycle

There is a significant lack of residential addiction recovery facilities in Scotland and none for women with children. My Travelling Fellowship funded through the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust demonstrated the benefits of residential treatment for this client group.

I travelled to Washington and Connecticut State to explore services for pregnant and parenting women with addictions. This type of facility does not exist in Scotland, so I wanted to learn more about the residential recovery models and how we might be able to use some of these to provide mothers and children with more choice in their recovery journey, whilst remaining together.

Current community drug treatment services are not designed to provide support to individuals in their role as a parent, and family support services are not designed to treat problematic substance use which results in the two issues being treated as separate entities.

Women as primary care givers who use substances are often vilified and judged as bad mothers. We know however from the generational cycle these women who use substances are more likely to have grown up with parents who used substances in a childhood characterised by abuse, neglect, violence and criminal activity. These mothers go on to have their own children and parent the only way they know, based on how they were parented

I travelled to Seattle and New Haven visiting a variety of services, both residential and community services. The main benefit I found regarding residential options for women and children is the provision of allowing mothers and their children to recover in a safe, stable and supervised environment. Many of the mothers I met, both on my travels and in my experience as a family worker, had experienced abuse, neglect, violence, homelessness, poverty and other traumatic circumstances.

By allowing mothers time we are allowing the opportunity to start from scratch in respect to sobriety and parenting. Nurturing the mother-child relationship is important when considering effective interventions for keeping families together safely and when residential treatment is not an option, situations involving parental substance use can become risky to manage. However, by providing intensive and evidence-based parenting interventions alongside treatment, allows for necessary monitoring, evaluation and supervision whilst causing the least disruption to the mother-child relationship. Allowing mother and child to maintain a positive attachment to each other will influence how the child goes on to form other attachments in their life.

It is important to acknowledge that residential options are not an appropriate option for all mothers with addictions and thorough assessments must be carried out to make that decision. Similarly, it is important to acknowledge that not all children are able to remain with their families safely and removing a child may be the safest option.

Residential facilities for pregnant and parenting women alone are not a guaranteed recipe for sobriety and good parenting, however combining these with individualised assessments, longer periods of support and time to build trusting relationships which foster connections, can be vital in successful recovery as a family.

Lyndsay Fraser Robertson is a family outreach worker with Circle Scotland