Background: Pregnant and postpartum women who are homeless and near homeless are a highly vulnerable population, especially when their problems are compounded by substance use. The PAMPERRS and MIRRORS+ programs provided evidence-based mental health treatment, case management, and recovery support for women and children through integrated, trauma-informed care and services, strengthened by a comprehensive and coordinated family systems approach. This paper will describe the programs for women and children and provide evaluation data that demonstrates its effectiveness. Clients participated in an inpatient recovery program. In addition, they received trauma informed care that included evidence-based mental health services, family services, and case management. Clients were assessed at intake, discharge and 6-months after intake on family functioning, recovery capitol, stress, parenting and substance use.
Results: Ninety-three percent of the clients discharged successfully from the program, and substance abuse decreased to 5.6% at follow-up. Over 80% of clients reported that the programs enhanced their recovery treatment experience. We examined individual differences in trends over time with multilevel modeling. Within-person trends over time were modeled in the first level, and individual differences in intercepts and slopes were modeled in the second level. Women reported significant improvements in general family functioning, posttraumatic stress symptoms, reductions in perceived stress and parenting risk. Further, participants increased their recovery capital, improved their parental monitoring, and increased social support over time.
Conclusion: Overall, the two programs met the planned goals and successfully helped the women to decrease use and abuse of alcohol and illicit and prescription drugs; reduce related effects of maternal substance abuse on infants and children; improve mental and physical health of themselves and their children; and, improve family functioning and quality of life.