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.
Source: Conor Lally, Irish Times, 15/09/2012
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