Experiences of mothers with substance dependence: Informing the development of parenting support

To understand the experiences of women with a history of substance dependence when they attempted to gain parenting support.

Becoming a mother provides a window of opportunity to support women with a substance dependence make changes to their lives and the way they will parent their infants and young children. Yet there are many barriers and a constant fear of the removal of their children from their care.

Focus groups were conducted using a qualitative interpretive descriptive approach to enable exploration of the women's experiences as mothers with infants and young children.

A series of three focus groups were facilitated with three to six women per group. Thirteen women who were substance dependent participated in this study. Semi-structured interviews guided the collection of data. Thematic content analysis was used to work with the data.

Four themes were identified: (1) feelings of guilt, (2) judged by others, (3) normalising and (4) support and learning to be a mother.

The mothers expressed alienation from mainstream health services. Providing parenting and child health services, which avoid mothers feeling judged by the staff and other mothers, is an important step to enabling these women to appropriately and sensitively care for their infants and young children.

Midwives and nurses working with mothers and their infants and young children are well positioned to support women who are or have experienced substance dependence. Working with this group of mothers requires the development of a therapeutic relationship to provide optimum support, education and, if necessary, intervention.