NAS Program: Assessment, Intervention, and Developmental Pediatric Support Services for Mothers in Recovery

The population of focus or this project is postpartum and parenting women with an opioid use disorder (OUD) seeking or receiving medically assisted treatment (MAT), and the children of these women, ages 0-5, who were exposed to substances in utero. This project will incorporate developmental pediatric services and trauma based coaching strategies into the Beyond Birth Comprehensive Recovery Center, an outpatient addiction treatment center for women who are mothers. Services will include infant and child developmental assessment, support from Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language, and Physical Therapy as well as offer group and individual Jin Shin Jytsu sessions demonstrated to improve pain, trauma, and symptoms of neonatal abstinence syndrome. In addition to receiving individual and group delivered services, women will receive guided support and coaching and assistance with providing a safe home environment with the tools necessary to offer opportunities for developmentally appropriate play. The evaluation process will track the effectiveness of services offered as well as a child’s progress to meet developmental milestones. Our specific intent is to reach families are impacted by multigenerational addiction and abuse. In addition to providing intensive developmental services for infants and young children as determined by preliminary developmental assessments, 50 unique, mother-infant dyads will participate in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy. We aim to target mothers of children at risk of abuse or neglect during the first five years of life because of active substance use or early recovery threatened by lack of access to parental support and developmental services for a prenatally exposed infant or child. Anticipated outcomes include reduced parental stress, increasing safety of a child’s home through a mother’s growing recovery capital, and improved parenting skills due to guided, specific strategies that are important when parenting a child with a neurodevelopmental concern. Beyond Birth is located in Lexington, (Fayette Co.) KY, and provides care to women across the state, including the Appalachian region of KY. The Beyond Birth program (BB) is a physician-led clinic outpatient partnership between University of Kentucky HealthCare (UKHC) and the UK, College of Nursing, Perinatal Research and Wellness Center and UK Department of Psychiatry that provides comprehensive treatment for postpartum women with OUD including MAT. Currently, the patient population of Beyond Birth is representative of 43 eastern and central Kentucky counties. Substance abuse treatment, prenatal substance exposure, developmental pediatrics, developmental milestones, intervention, medication-assisted treatment