Eastern Ky. recovery center keeps mothers with their kids during addiction treatment
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New heart, new chance
Last April, Megan Simpson graduated from Freedom House, a recovery center in Clay County that specializes in recovery for mothers and pregnant women. This time was different for Simpson: relapsing was not an option.
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Jennifer Hancock had just been named president in April 2015 of Volunteers of America Mid-States, a nonprofit organization that specializes in recovery centers, when substance use disorder rocked her own family.
VOA Recovery’s Freedom House offers specialized treatment for pregnant women and mothers to lower the number of babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome and reunite mothers with their kids.
“I thought this was going to be my profession passion,” she said. “But my personal and professional worlds collided in a way that was really unexpected, and really forever changing my perspective on who is affected and how people get affected.”
Hancock, who received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Kentucky, started her career at Chrysalis House in Lexington, which specializes in alcohol and drug treatment for women and their children. She made her way up to become a therapist in the midst of the crack cocaine epidemic, the height of the war on drugs. She enjoyed working with women and families. In 2007, she began working at Volunteers of America Mid-States as vice president of program development. She later became the vice president of external relations and then chief operating officer.
Hancock’s passion to help women and their families with addiction deepened. VOA had already found success in Louisville with its Freedom House, which opened in 1993. Since then, VOA has opened two additional Freedom Houses in Louisville. Hancock looked to southeast Kentucky.
In 2014, a New York Times article “What’s the matter with Eastern Kentucky?” named Clay County the hardest place to live. It painted the county of having a high poverty rate, a low population of those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, a high unemployment rate, a high disability rate, a lower life expectancy and a higher percentage of obese residents compared to the rest of the country.
The article was the motivation for Hancock to open a recovery center in Manchester.
She had the support of the current AdventHealth Manchester president and CEO Chris Self who saw the value of “whole person recovery.” Women who were addicted were coming into the hospital with no prenatal care and delivering babies addicted to substances.
Next, she had to get the community’s support. She hosted a town hall in 2018. She told the crowd about Volunteers of America’s approach to substance use treatment: sometimes using medicine-assisted treatment, such as Suboxone, a medication that is used to treat opioid addiction. The feeling in the room changed, she recalled.
“The issue here is that Suboxone has been so misused and diverted and perpetuated this problem so that the public really sees it as more symptomatic of a problem, not a solution…At some point in substance use disorder, you are no longer avoiding getting high, you are no longer going through withdrawal,” she said. “You’re just really trying to get through without going through withdrawal.”
Despite the community’s hesitation to Freedom House’s holistic approach, Hancock was able to sell the residents on a different way of treatment by casting a vision of hope and that recovery is possible, she said.
Freedom House in Manchester opened in March 2020. By April, a mother delivered Freedom House’s first healthy baby, Heavenly Grace. So far, the Manchester recovery center has served 170 women and delivered 10 healthy babies. The center has been full every day since it opened, Hancock said.
Hancock said in 2021, the average NICU stay for a baby born substance exposed was 18.2 days, for Freedom House clients at Manchester, it was five days, and at Louisville, it was two days.
The average cost savings per baby born is $19,400. Many of the new mothers use Medicaid as their health insurance.
The effects of a child born without substance exposure extends past the newborn phase, she said.
Hancock said pregnant women who have substance use disorder tend to use while they’re pregnant and deliver their babies very early. The issues with substance exposure can continue into their lives, she said. Kids who have substance exposure are more likely to have vision problems, hearing problems, learning disabilities and lifelong global developmental delays that change their life’s trajectory.
Freedom House Director Mariah Langdon said treating someone with substance use disorder goes beyond that person.
“You help the children. You help the future generations,” she said. “There’s so many things that can end here. … This is more than a 30 day program. This is a life change.”
Next year, Freedom House will celebrate 30 years. Hancock is reflecting on the accomplishments of the treatment centers. She thinks of Tara, one of the first graduates she met when she started at VOA 15 years ago. Tara came to Freedom House with her young son. She returned back to use and eventually returned as her son was starting kindergarten. Tara’s young son is now 24 and has a daughter.
“I feel so strongly that these babies did not get to pick the number they drew,” she said. “If we can enable their future success by radically embracing and loving their mothers and giving them permission to heal in a safe place where they won’t be judged, then not only does mom get to go on with her life feeling ready to be the healthy, loving parent that she always was, but we get to really disrupt an entire generation of disease in a way that sets this future generation up for success.”