New court to help mothers at risk of losing their children

This blog is about an article I read on the internet and I think you can link this to unit 1 ; 'types of court'.
The article is about a woman, Sharon Simms who started abusing drugs at the age of 12 when she lived in a children's home. At the age of 30, she was addicted to crack, cocaine and alcohol. She saw three of her children taken away by social workers, the youngest just days after she was born.
Sharon Simms is not a rare example. There are a lot of mothers who lose child after child because of addiction problems. One mother lost already 14 babies. Each time she gave birth , her baby was whisked away.
For Simms, it was too hard to deal with the situation. She wanted to change her life because of her removed baby. She went on a residential treatment course, came off drugs and got her children back. She now works with other women who are trying to beat the addiction of alcohol and drugs and she will soon become a 'mentor mum' in the first drug and alcohol court in the UK!

The court is formally launched today and will start working in January. It is based on a model which has been successful in the US in helping parents fight the addictions.
Most of the funding of this £1.34 m initiative, comes from central government where two out of three care cases are linked to parent's substance misuse. In the court, each judge will follow his own cases through. Parents will be offered intervention by experts from the children's charity.

The idea of the court came from an encouter between Crichton and California judge, Len Adwards, at a conference in Australia in 2002.
Simms, now 36, credits the Maya treatment centre, where she now works, with helping her turn her life around. It offered her a six-month programme where she was allowed to have her baby back with her and to see her two other children. She started a new life.