This recovery home is getting $2.6 million to help Kentucky mothers in recovery

Children ran around and expecting mothers waddled throughout Freedom House in Clay County Tuesday as officials celebrated a $2.6 million federal grant to help women overcome substance abuse disorder

The Freedom House, a Volunteers of America program, opened March 13, just as COVID-19 settled on Kentucky. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration grant will be used for operating costs and to expand services over a five-year period.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Senate President Robert Stivers and University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto were at the Freedom House to celebrate the grant Tuesday.

Substance abuse disorder continues to thrive during the coronavirus pandemic, McConnell said.

“We’re talking about a problem that predated the pandemic regretfully, one that we’ve been fighting for a number of years, at least for the last decade,” McConnell said. “No matter who was in the White House, no matter who was in the majority, the problem was there and we were working together to try to get on top of it.”

Freedom House is making a difference in people’s lives, said Doug Scofield, the VOA’s senior director of communications and government relations.

In its first five months, the recovery center had a graduate who is now working for the City of Manchester and a health baby born. Jennifer Hancock, the VOA Mid-States President and CEO, said this is a wonderful example of success.

Opening in a pandemic was challenging, Hancock said. They asked women to take a risk by moving into a residence where they were required to follow safety protocols, like wearing a mask.

Early intervention is the goal of the Freedom House. They receive referrals of pregnant and parenting women from AdventHealth Manchester and the local jail.

“The need is great,” Scofield said. “It’s very difficult to stop and it’s very, very expensive. … If we can intervene early and the baby is born healthy that’s a bottom line savings to people as well as the really important health outcomes.”

The Freedom House can serve 16 pregnant or parenting moms.

McConnell said he is optimistic that society can solve this “extraordinary problem.”

“I’m more optimistic now about our ability to do that than I was a few years ago given the resources that have been poured into this effort,” he said. “The leadership you have seen on full display here makes me optimistic that we’re going to get past this.”

Volunteers of America will also partner with the University of Kentucky Human Development Institute to help evaluate its program and expand its reach in Southeastern Kentucky.

Scofield said the Freedom House wants to transparently show their outcomes and find ways to better their service.

“For us that is helpful, because we feel confident about our model,” he said. “It’s a chance to say ‘here is the good work we do’ and we get some data behind it, which isn’t easy to do because it is expensive and hard to follow. Also, it is the right thing to do. We’ll learn what we can do better or what it going great.”

Capilouto said the partnership is part of the university’s commitment to help reduce opioid deaths by 40 percent in three years.

“That is a steep hill and COVID makes it even more difficult,” he said.

Pregnant and parenting mothers are an under served population in recovery, he said. Often parents must decide between giving up their children or going to a recovery center. At Freedom House, the family stays together.

“There’s not a ton of people in this space that are particularity geared to pregnant and parenting women and we’ve traditionally been a leader in that,” Scofield said.

VOA was one of three organizations in the nation to receive the SAMSHA grant.