Parents in Recovery

Everyone wants to be a good role model, but parents working to overcome addiction face added pressures. With the right support, you can build positive relationships with your children as you work on your recovery.

Be A Positive Role Model – Even In Recovery

Working on recovery as you parent may seem daunting, but it’s a great opportunity to put everything you’re learning into practice.

Recovery requires us to take an honest look at our behaviors, emotional responses, and thought patterns. As you learn new ways of communicating and coping, you can model these skills for your children.

CHD offers these and other resources to support your journey:

FIRST Steps Together

This peer coaching program is for mothers recovering from opioid dependence. You’ll be matched with a recovery specialist who’ll come to your home and support you through your parenting and recovery work.

FIRST Steps Together also offers:

  • Group therapy
  • Referrals for healthcare and substance use treatment
  • Connections to community-based services
  • Help with services you’re currently receiving

Participants must be pregnant or have a child under 5.

Parenting Journey In Recovery

Parenting Journey is a therapeutic support group that believes in the resilience of parents – and of harnessing that power to build healthy communities.

Parents meet weekly for two-hour sessions over the course of 14 weeks. There’s no charge to join and lunch and childcare are provided.

For 35 years, this evidence-based, multilingual program has built stronger families by teaching life skills and connecting parents to helpful resources.

Graduates of the program report:

  • A reduction in stress
  • A better understanding of how their upbringing affects their parenting behaviors
  • An increased ability to access social support

Parenting Journey is part of an ongoing initiative to create new and exciting ways to support parents. We’re working to bring the program to more locations in Western Massachusetts.

Central Registration Desk

Please call this number for information about programs, services, and more.