Tina’s Haven: Catalyst for emancipatory practice for birthmothers
source: Women's Resource Centre
first published: May 2024
"In Love and Anger" is a report of an action research-based study of the pioneering Tina’s Haven pilot project, delivered in East Durham during 2022 and 2023. Twenty-eight women in addiction recovery participated in the Tina’s Haven pilot project, the majority were birthmothers severed from their children. Full Report / Executive Summary.
This study emerges within the context of:
- Marginalised and vulnerable females in the North East being found 1.7 times as likely to die early than in England and Wales as a whole; and the average age at death falling by ten years, from 47 to 37
- Mortality rates from drug poisoning decreasing for males and increasing for females in 2022; and drug related deaths in the North East being consistently the highest of any English region for ten consecutive years
- The North East, having the highest number of children in the care system, 113 per 10K; 1.6 times the national average
The study shines a light on the plight of birthmothers severed from their children by addiction as a result of: VAWG, early trauma, exclusion from their families and communities, being marginalised and stigmatised by state services; and further harmed from involvement with legal institutions that are known to blame and punish women for the abuse they have been subjected to.
The intention of the Tina’s Haven project is to develop a transferable model of holistic and emancipatory praxis, that will bring about self-empowerment and solidarity among birthmothers severed from their children by trauma-based addiction.
