It is obvious that Michelle, like any young mother, is besotted with her baby as she smothers her in kisses.

But getting to this point has not been easy. Michelle found out she was pregnant two days before she started a five-month prison sentence for assault causing actual bodily harm. She had been addicted to heroin and crack for two years, and had been sleeping rough before she went to jail.

A week before the end of her sentence she found out she had got a place in Naomi House in Bristol, one of only two mother-and-baby drug treatment services in the country for addicts.

With the support she got there, she has been drug- and alcohol-free for 10 months and next month – on her 24th birthday – will move into a new flat with her daughter.

“Most women don’t get a chance, people don’t want to help women who use, they don’t expect women not to be able to look after their children,” she says, speaking in the light-filled therapy room in the Naomi House garden. “I was lucky enough to get this chance, I know I won’t get another.”

Neither will others in her situation. At the end of February, Naomi House will close its doors, a victim of severe public spending cuts that have made its existence untenable.

via >No place to go as cuts force mother-and-baby drug treatment centre to close | Society | guardian.co.uk.