Programs that help mothers, children may be in jeopardy

When she was four months pregnant and starting to show, Brandy Paceley was so addicted that she couldn’t quit smoking meth even though it made her sick to her stomach.

Even her drug dealers didn’t want to sell to her anymore because they feared the damage to her unborn child.

“You feel worthless. The shame is the big one. An innocent child, are you kidding me?” she said. “The only thing that gives you relief is to use again.”

But that seems like a lifetime ago. Paceley, 31, has been clean now for three years, thanks to the Center for Hope in Mesa. Since 2005, 105 women have given up drugs and given birth to drug-free babies with no birth defects while living at the center.

Now the agency and many of its alumni fear that state budget cuts and loss of funding will jeopardize their progress.

They’re not worried so much about their own agency, which relies primarily on federal Medicaid funding, but they fear for agencies down the line that rely on imperiled state funding.

Those agencies provide transitional housing, education and job placement once the women are off meth.

“We can only go so far. We need the rest of the system to help us,” said Kim Craig, vice president and director of women’s and children’s programs at the Center for Hope. “We need a continuum of care and can’t have a block wall.”

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Article by: by Jim Walsh – Apr. 13, 2010 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic