LYNN — A mother will be reunited with her 15 month-old child after about a year of separation Monday at the opening of The Lotus House, a transitional residence for women and children affected by substance addiction.
Walking through the two-story home on 8 Rogers Ave. Thursday evening, it appeared indistinguishable from a high-end bed and breakfast— the living room and kitchen area was equipped with seemingly brand new kitchen appliances, a flat screen television, and an L-shaped couch. Upstairs, the 10 two-bed units, meant to each house a woman and her children, enclosed rocking chairs, cribs, and new wooden furniture.
Bridgewell, a Peabody-based nonprofit that specializes in a wide array of services, from recovery and disability supports, to behavioral health programs, was granted an annual operating budget of approximately $687,500, funded by a contract with the Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Addiction Services (BSAS). The contract with BSAS covers general operating expenses for the Lotus House program, such as staffing and utilities.
Bridgewell’s Vice President of Recovery, Housing, and Community Supports Joanna Huntington said that the home, which at full capacity, will house 10 families, is meant as a stepping stone for pregnant women or mothers who are out of recovery, at least six months sober, and ready to seek permanent housing.
“After completion [of rehabilitation services], they could then step down into an environment that’s a little less restrictive, and have a little more freedom, but it’s also like a stepping stone to maybe a permanent housing environment,” Huntington said.
The house’s first two residents, a mother, and her child, reunited after a year-long Department of Family Services (DFS) separation, will be welcomed in on Monday to a home that will provide a variety of resources to its guests, from helping to manage and open bank accounts, to group counseling and therapy sessions.
“The client would be responsible for creating a schedule that would include a certain number of meetings during the week, a certain number of appointments, a certain number of groups and the groups that kind of look at as, you know, some clinical and some psycho educational groups,” Huntington said. “Maybe they need to work on opening a bank account and rectifying any issues that they’ve had with a bank in the past or maybe some more clinical groups might be something different, like relationships, healthy relationships, codependency […] maybe a trauma group that might support their mental health development.”
Bridgewell currently operates a number of facilities in Lynn— a 24-bed residential building for pregnant and post-partum women on Johnson Street, and a 10 two-bedroom women and children’s housing on North Commons Street. Huntington said that Bridgewell chose to open another facility in Lynn so that it would complement some of the organization’s pre-existing programs.
“Picking Lynn made the most sense because, number one, we already owned this 8 Rogers Ave. location, and we felt like it was the perfect environment for a transitional housing model. But then, we also have programs in Lynn that would be [helpful] before they would enter this environment and then after, so a real continuum of care,” Huntington said. “Lynn has a wonderful recovery community. There’s a peer recovery center opening up soon, and we have an outpatient clinic that specializes in substance use disorder. Everything is pretty much within walking distance of that 8 Rogers Ave. location.”
Bridgewell named the facility after the lotus flower, an aquatic plant that grows without light into a bright, colorful flower, to symbolize, Huntington said, “a human being born from nothing and turning into something complete and beautiful.”
