Drug centre for mothers closes doors to new cases

THE ONLY residential drug treatment centre in the State for mothers and their young children has stopped taking new referrals and plans to close when the women residing there have completed their treatment because it can no longer fund itself.

Those who manage the Dublin facility are appealing to Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Frances Fitzgerald and Minister of State at the Department of Health Róisín Shortall to intervene and provide a once-off sum of €100,000 they say is required to keep the centre open.

Coolmine Therapeutic Centre chief executive Paul Conlon said the mother-and-baby facility could be kept running if the organisation was given money to expand its existing small creche. “We could hire another childcare worker and then open it to the public to make it self-funding,” he said.

The Ashleigh House facility for women is run by Mr Conlon’s organisation and is situated between Blanchardstown, west Dublin, and Clonee, Co Meath. The centre can accommodate up to 15 women at a time in six-month residential courses aimed at leading clients to drug-free lives.

In 2008 the organisation received once-off funds of about €80,000 from the South Inner City Local Drugs Task Force and the office of the National Drugs Strategy, which enabled it to convert a building at Ashleigh House into a creche.

Since then it has funded the creche itself and three or four of the Ashleigh House residential places have been reserved for women with children ranging in age from newborns to three years.

Drug-dependent mothers have been able to undertake six-month residential treatment programmes, living with their children at the centre. They care for their children in the evenings and at weekends but attend group therapy and other forms of treatment between 9am and 5pm on weekdays, when their children are cared for in the on-site creche.

Mr Conlon has said his organisation’s funding – which comes mainly from the State and some from clients’ social welfare – has been reduced to €2.6 million from €3.2 million in 2008. And while staff had taken pay cuts and other expenditure reductions had been achieved, the organisation could no longer afford the creche at its Ashleigh House facility.

He said when the creche closes, women with babies will no longer be able to come for residential treatment, or if they do they will need to attend alone and will therefore be separated from their children in the early weeks and months of life “when mother-child bonding is so crucial”.

He said Ms Fitzgerald and Ms Shortall had both visited the centre since taking office and had seen the benefits its unique facilities provided. If funding was not forthcoming, Ashleigh House would close, probably next spring, when the three women residing there and two others about to take up places had completed their stays.

“We stopped taking new referrals last week,” Mr Conlon said.

The board of the Coolmine Therapeutic Centre wrote to both Ministers last week seeking a meeting to discuss the matter.

A spokeswoman for Ms Fitzgerald confirmed correspondence had been received on Tuesday. She said while the Minister did not want to see services lost, she could make no further comment until the matter was fully considered and consultation had taken place.

A spokeswoman for Ms Shortall said a meeting would be “arranged shortly” with Coolmine management, though the issue came under the Minister for Children’s remit.