Home > Women, drug use and parenting in Dublin: the views of professional workers in the drug treatment and social work fields.

Woods, Marguerite (1999) Women, drug use and parenting in Dublin: the views of professional workers in the drug treatment and social work fields. In: Illicit drugs: patterns of use - pattern of response: 10th annual ESSD Conference on Drug Use and Drug Policy in Europe, 20-22 September 1999, Vienna, Austria.

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A brief overview of some of the emergent findings from interviews with professional workers in the drug treatment and social work fields in Dublin is presented here. This is part of a qualitative study in progress which focuses on female drug users' experience of parenting. These interviews highlight the issues of poverty, deprivation, community activism, sexism and stigma and how these may impact on the experience of parenting and the perceived necessity for the women to "perform "for the services, families, children and communities. This article concludes that while drug treatment and social work activities are conservative and reforming in nature, there is a need to develop a range of services that recognise women's roles as mothers; that there is a need to promote mainstream and specialist services for women drug users and their children that avoid an adversarial approach; that services need also to acknowledge women drug users' interests and aspirations for involvement in the world of "work" beyond that of parenting in the domestic sphere.


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