More treatment key for addicted moms

Holly Rybinski, of Newport, said she had to go to jail in order to get the drug treatment she needed. That was almost two years ago.

She had stayed clean for five years, but while she was pregnant his child, her partner overdosed and died. Consumed by grief, Rybinski turned to heroin and cocaine during the last five months of her pregnancy.

After she gave birth to her son James April 8, 2014, at Christiana Care's Wilmington Hospital, she was ready to be clean.

She said the Division of Family Services told her that they had to take custody of him since James tested positive for drugs, she wasn't in a treatment program and Rybinski had a record. They told her she had 90 days to find employment, treatment and stable housing and then they could discuss putting him back in her care.

That request was easier said than done. There were issues with insurance coverage and doctors who would not approve her residential treatment since she had given birth only weeks before, she said.

"I tried five different times to get into treatment," Rybinski said. "It was just one obstacle after the other."

As the number of pregnant and addicted mothers grows, the need for treatment is even more critical. Community members, families and those now in recovery, like Rybinski, have long lamented Delaware's lack of residential treatment options. Many people have to wait days and even weeks to get a bed. Many have to go out of state.

That was the case with Rybinski. She tried to get admitted to rehabs in Maryland and Pennsylvania before turning back to heroin once she was denied access.

The treatment options available do boast results.

Over the last three years, about 774 women were helped by a Brandywine Counseling program that helped connect women to prenatal care, jobs, training and case management. In that same period, 189 babies were born and 167 were born free of illicit drugs, data from the organization showed. About 145 were delivered to full term and 133 were born within a healthy weight.

Currently, there is one state-run treatment program for expectant or new mothers recovering from addiction in Delaware, but it is only for women who are incarcerated and it is in Newark.

Run through the Delaware Department of Correction and Connections Community Support Programs, the DOC’s healthcare provider, a judge can sentence women to the program, called New Expectations, as a condition of probation instead of house arrest or prison. The women live in a group home, receive prenatal care and take parenting classes.

Brandywine Counseling ran a program for expecting moms wrestling with addiction, called Lighthouse, downstate in Ellendale, but it closed in September due to budget cuts and staffing shortages.

About 28 to 40 women participated in the program at any one time over the five years it was active, said Lynn Fahey, Brandywine chief executive officer.

Editorial: To save the kids, treat the addicted parents

Lighthouse wasn’t just a group home – it offered a residential level of care to help women manage cravings with around the clock staffing. Fahey estimated it cost about $700,000 a year to support, but data from Brandywine shows it was extremely successful. Nearly 100 percent of women were able to give birth to babies free of drugs, Fahey said.

In the year before it closed, about 98 percent of women enrolled in Lighthouse re-established relationships with their children or immediate family members. Nine cases investigated by DFS closed during the women’s treatment and all women were able to find jobs.

“If the children had been taken, we were able to help the mom re-unify and get the children out of foster care,” Fahey said. “It is an expensive level of care to do it right."

One of the other problems is spotty insurance coverage, explained MaryBeth Cichocki, a member of the advocacy group atTAack Addiction.

There is a set amount of time people can stay in residential treatment programs, typically up to 30 days, and then people are back out on the streets.

"Medicaid pays thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars for all these babies in the hospital," Cichocki said. "Yet if they would just get the mothers into a good rehab and keep them there until their brain starts to heal so the cravings aren’t so powerful and the mom wants to use again."

Rybinski was one such mom that had difficulty getting treated.

Frustrated that she couldn't get care, shei ramped up her drug use and started stealing from vehicles in New Castle County neighborhoods to feed her habit. Eventually she was arrested and sentenced to two treatment programs run through the DOC. DFS terminated her parental rights.

Rybinski was just released after being incarcerated for 18 months. While she was in jail, a foster family brought James to see her every month. Her two other kids, Scarlet, now 3, and Gage, 8, stayed with her mom, and thought she was in "time out."

Had she been connected to treatment services immediately or had a halfway house to stay after she was discharged from the hospital, Rybinski said her life might have taken a different turn.

"I might have 18 months clean and been home for the past year," she said.

Though it wasn't a perfect scenario, she is grateful she was separated from James when he was born. She acknowledged that caring for a newborn and trying to manage her addiction could have been detrimental to his health.

"I don't think they should have given him back to me right then," she said.

Now she's happy that she gets to see him every other weekend and he is going to be adopted by her partner's, his dad's, family. She's enjoying life with her other children, Scarlet and Gage, finishing her college degree in multimedia design, and counseling people struggling with addiction. Hearing Scarlet say "I love you to pancakes," the three year old's favorite food, is music to her ears.

"I let [addiction] become my life. I need to stay clean," she said. "I forgot what my purpose was."

Jen Rini can be reached at (302)324-2386 or jrini@delawareonline.com. Follow @JenRini on Twitter.