Featuring a Thrive nursery doing wonderful work, Addicted: Last Chance Mums focuses on Plymouth’s Trevi House, a residential unit providing intensive treatment programs for mothers on the brink of losing their children.
With an astonishing number of new born babies being taken into care, can mothers struggling with addiction manage to turn it around to maintain custody of their child? Trevi House certainly thinks so. With exclusive access, Panorama follows the unit’s tireless work into breaking the addiction cycle for women. The mother’s lifetime relationship with her child will be informed by the steps she takes here.
Don’t be deterred by the severity of the title, the topic is handled with incredible compassion. At present, children’s care services are in crises as the number of children taken into care has reached a record high. Right now, there are almost 73,000 children in care across the UK. The sad reality is that instead of being shown compassion and understanding, UK women have all too often been met with judgement.
Babies as young as 3 months are looked after in the Thrive nursery at Trevi House; they are teaching resilience for the children and providing the mother with the necessary tools to build healthy relationships with their child. They also concentrate on coping strategies to enable the women to positively integrate back into society.
There is a stark message throughout Last Chance Mums: this is not an opportunity to put a negative light on those struggling. Rather, it is non-stigmatising and powerful enough to change the preconceptions surrounding addiction.
Mothers that are allowed to keep their baby whilst receiving rehabilitation, as opposed to having them snatched away, are 76% more likely to beat addiction. This crucial statistic informs the work done at Trevi House and proves that with the right support, mothers are truly able to turn their situation around to benefit both themselves and their new born.
Hannah Shead, CEO at Trevi House hopes that this programme begins to challenge the stigma associated with maternal drug and alcohol use and demonstrates that, with the right help and support form organisations like Thrive, mums can keep children in their care whilst receiving treatment, and that lasting change is absolutely possible.
To find out more about the program, click here.
Otherwise, tune in to BBC One at 20:30 on Monday 29th January.