Contact:
Krysta West
Communications Director
Senate Republican Office
(207) 287-1505
krysta.west@legislature.maine.gov

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AUGUSTA – Assistant Majority Leader Amy Volk (R-Cumberland) has introduced LD 1771, “An Act To Stabilize Vulnerable Families,” to re-direct funding to expand on a holistic treatment model that has proven to be highly-successful at addressing opioid addiction.

Under this model, which has been utilized by the McAuley Residence, a department of Mercy Hospital in Portland for 30 years, opiate-addicted mothers are provided stable housing and a comprehensive array of support services that allow for recovery and reunification with children. By utilizing a high-accountability model that treats the entire family, this facility achieves a remarkable 80% long-term sobriety success rate, and demand for their services greatly exceeds the capacity for this program.

LD 1771 would build on this successful model, creating a pilot with several housing-based programs, each providing coordinated care in a holistic approach to recovery for vulnerable families affected by opioid dependence.

Senator Volk said, “There are no short-cuts to successful recovery, and when there are children involved, we need to ensure that their lives are stabilized and the cycle of dependency and victimization is broken.

“My heart aches when I hear of children who have been taken from their parents and bounced around the foster care system. It breaks when I hear of a child finding a parent overdosed. Every child is precious, but in the oldest state in the country, we cannot afford to allow a single child’s life to be turned upside down and destroyed by their parents’ dependency. We must do all we can to offer whole-family treatment that we know will result in lives saved both now and in the future.”

This bill has been referred to the Health and Human Services Committee and has not yet been scheduled for a public hearing.

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