PRESTONSBURG — There will be room for a little more Hope in the Mountains, when the women’s treatment facility completes its current expansion.
Hope in the Mountains is a 90-day treatment program that offers drug and alcohol counseling to women, as well as counseling to victims of domestic violence.
“We’re building a structure that is big enough to hold 30 more women,” director Renee McCoy said. McCoy says the treatment facility currently only has room for 10 women. The first person walked through Hope in the Mountains’ door in March 2008. Since then, more than 170 women have passed through its halls.
“We’re very excited that we’re going to be able to serve more,” McCoy said. “We’re all challenged to meet the need.”
According to McCoy, the facility, which is located off Watergap Road, works with many women who are sentenced to rehab treatment through Drug Court.
The facility also offers a garden, which provides a therapeutic outlet for the women in treatment. The garden is operated in partnership with St. Vincent Mission and Grow Appalachia.
When asked if the center tries to help women re-enter the world by finding them jobs and places to live McCoy said, “We try as best we can. So many of them live away from here.”
McCoy says the center tries to establish living arrangements for the women when they leave, and that they contact the various housing authorities to try to aid the women as they try to begin their new life.
“We do link them to the community resources of where they’re going to,” said McCoy.
One of the tragic aspects of Eastern Kentucky’s drug epidemic is the number of children born into it. Hope in the Mountains offers a place for pregnant women and provides transportation and support through their many medical appointments.
The project is expected to be complete in September.
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