Residential substance abuse treatment program for women to open next fall

At its Tuesday meeting, the Travis County Commissioners Court approved a $469,559 contract for a residential substance use treatment program for women, using the state’s opioid abatement funds. The contract is the first time an inpatient residential resource has been available in Austin for low-income adults struggling with addiction since Austin Recovery shuttered in August 2020.

Santa Maria Hostel in Houston, one of Texas’ largest multisite residential and outpatient substance use disorder treatment centers for women – “and one of a very few to offer a full continuum of services for women who are pregnant or parenting” – according to its website, will run the program, marking its first venture into Central Texas. The facility will begin with 30 beds for pregnant women and women living with children up to 12 years old. Santa Maria hopes to increase that number once the program is fully staffed, but the final count will vary based on the specific clients who are living at the facility and how many children they bring. The average length of stay in the program is expected to be three months but will also be individualized to each participant’s needs. The program will also provide peer support and step-down services including outpatient care. 

This kind of programming will fill a gap in Travis County’s recovery offerings. When Austin Recovery closed, it was serving 46 clients in its residential program and 96 in its outpatient programs. The opioid crisis has only worsened since then, and women requiring these kinds of inpatient services have had to travel outside of Austin to access them. Currently, the county’s Parenting in Recovery Program – created for parents dealing with substance abuse who are involved in the Child Protective Services Civil Court system – is serving about 60 women and men.

“At any point, 20 to 25 women are going to need to go into treatment with their children just from that one program,” said Laura Peveto, the county’s division director of the Office of Children Services. “So we’re hoping that they can expand beyond the 30 beds because we feel like we can actually utilize that support.” 

The facility will be located off U.S. Highway 183 near Payton Gin Road on a bus route and is in the process of being renovated. In addition to individual rooms, it has shared space for groups and on-site child care, as well as a commercial kitchen. Together with the opioid abatement funds, Santa Maria has raised $2.3 million, with help from donors like Blue Cross Blue Shield and the St. David’s Foundation. However, fully funding operations hinges on the state: Texas Health and Human Services offers a grant for women and their children in treatment, and Santa Maria will apply for that this fall. If they get it, those funds will become available in the fall of 2025, when the program is anticipated to open. 

“I think it’s critically important to be able to serve community members in the community,” Commissioner Jeff Travillion said. “We can send them elsewhere and maybe even get good results, but the important thing is helping them develop a new set of interactions at home. It’s critical that we are able to provide these services here where the families are.”

Peveto agreed, saying, “It’s been difficult to bring them back from outside of the community and have to start basically from scratch developing that. The ability to integrate them back into their natural support systems, for them to be able to start their recovery work in the community, is critically important.”

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