Congratulations to our 2024 Grant Award Winner, Face Addiction Now!!!!

Learn more about this great organization by visiting their website here.

Project Summary: Children of pregnant and post-partum mothers (who are in recovery) are completely dependent upon the community's support of these women. Navigation and mentoring support for these mothers is essential to: maintain a sober environment for infants; avoid unnecessary foster care placements; and prevent infant mortality. By providing support to mothers [who themselves are scared of relapsing back into substance use], we can help these moms and their vulnerable infants. Our project provides Pregnancy Peer Navigators (PPN) to pregnant and post-partum women. PPN are women who themselves have struggled in the past with navigating recovery from substance use and pregnancy at the same time. Having lived through this experience, they understand how to be empathetic, can provide relevant resources, can provide emotional support, and can uphold accountability in ways that maintain family unification, the health of the mother, and thereby the health of the child. Funding this project will allow us to hire PPNs, whose work protects children who are not able to protect themselves. It’s our experience that the mothers calling our Crisis Call Center are desperately seeking the support that a PPN could provide. Part of the problem is that many of these women are avoiding prenatal visits. There is a fear that their children may be taken away due to their previous history of substance use. Education, mentoring, transportation, and simply a listening ear provides an essential bridge towards re-engaging these women in critically important health care for the unborn child and themselves. Our project also supports post-partum mothers. Due to a prior history of substance use, one mother recently reported having her newborn child removed from her by Child Protective Services within five (5) minutes after giving birth! You can imagine the emotional state of such a mother. PPN support these women, build trust, navigate through barriers, restore homes, and thereby protect children.