Baby's Best Beginnings

Children are innocent. From the ages 0 – 6 they are completely dependent on the adult caregivers in their lives (usually parents) to provide for them physically, emotionally and spiritually. Children need to feel safe and secure in their environment. They need to know that their needs will be honoured and met. Children are looking to their caregivers as role models for how to solve problems, how to cope with stress and how to deal with frustration and anger.

Parental substance abuse can interfere with children getting their needs met. When parents are using substances to cope with life, they are often not able to be fully present with their children. When substance use has progressed to dependence, then it is likely that children will feel the effects of having their needs met inconsistently or not at all.

Sometimes children need adults, other than their parents, to stand up for them. This could mean that the Children’s Aid Society determines that the children are at risk for abuse or neglect, and so they take the children into care. If this happens, Hope Place Centres', Baby’s Best Beginnings program is there to help.

Over the past six years, many women have been helped by the Addiction Counsellors in the Baby’s Best Beginnings program. Mothers have received the addictions treatment and support they needed to reach the goal of having children returned to their care.

Women who are dependent on substances aren’t ‘bad mothers’. They are women who need addiction treatment, care and support in order to learn new ways of coping. They may also be required to attend parenting education. If so, Hope Place Centres', BEYOND THE BASICS Parenting Group is offered three times per year at various community sites to help mothers get in touch with what they already know about parenting, and to help them learn new skills and strategies.

Baby's Best Beginnings provides:

• Free and confidential counselling and support services at the office or in the Halton/Peel community where the  woman lives, for up to two years.

• Help to set goals, whether harm reduction or abstinence.

• Assessments for admission to Hope Place Women’s Residential Treatment Centre.

• BEYOND THE BASICS Parenting Group.

• Information sessions on substance use when pregnant or parenting.

• Referrals to other services in the community.

Call (905) 465-3324

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