CENTER HELPS FAMILIES GET BETTER TOGETHER

At the age of 3, Talon Wallace already wants to do things herself.

"She's very independent," her mother, Carrie Wallace, said as she
adjusted a backpack for her little girl. "She's got to wash her own
hair, brush her own hair."

Wallace savors the chance to watch her daughter assert her
independence. For most of her child's life, Wallace was hooked on
methamphetamine.

The 27-year-old Pryor woman, her daughter and 7-week old son now are
getting help at the MONARCH Community Living Center, 2310 W. Broadway.

MONARCH, or Muskogee Organization for Narcotics and Alcohol Referral
Counseling and Help, opened the facility last year to better serve
alcoholic or drug-addicted women and their families. Unlike its
residential treatment center at 501 Fredonia, which serves women only,
the Broadway facility offers residential treatment to women and their
children.

Wallace came to MONARCH six months ago to recover from a 14-year
addiction to meth.

That means she began using at 13.

"I just got caught up in it," she said. "I thought it was fun at
first, until it became my life."

Wallace said thanks to MONARCH's help, she has spent 210 days "clean
from meth."

Because they must care for their children while working toward
recovery, women stay at the Community Living Center for six months,
compared with three months at the residential treatment center.

"Here, the women have six hours a week of therapy," said Angie
McElhaney, clinical director at the Community Living Center. "There
(on Fredonia) it's 24 hours a week of therapy."

Therapy at the Community Living Center is less intense than at the
other center, she said.

Women undergo group and individual counseling, take recovery classes
based on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, go through job training
and learn parenting.

"I gained a lot of self-respect here," Wallace said.

Tulsa mother Shawna Webb, another recovering meth addict, said classes
she's taking at MONARCH are "helping in every aspect."

"I thought I had the parenting thing down until I came here," Webb
said as she fed biscuits and gravy to her 6-month old son, Tyler.

Webb, 33, had been taking meth for 18 years, long before her oldest
daughter, 11-year-old Courtney, was born.

"I was at Lewis and Clark Middle School (in east Tulsa) and it was
just the friends I hung out with," she recalled. "I didn't have a very
structured home life. I pretty much did what I wanted."

She wiped her son's mouth. "Now my kids will have structure."

Webb's oldest and youngest children are staying with her at MONARCH.
Webb's middle child, 7, lives with her husband.

"She's good with her dad and we're on good terms," she
said.

Like other women at the center, Webb spends most of her days in
therapy sessions or classes where she learns parenting, life skills,
stress management and relapse prevention.

During the classes, Tyler goes to day care center and Courtney goes to
Sadler Arts Academy, where she is in sixth grade.

"She's doing very well there," Webb said. "As soon as she got there,
they put her in a singing program and she's got a part in their
production of the 'Nutcracker.'"

MONARCH kids attend Muskogee schools, with most elementary age
children going to Creek Elementary School or Sadler, McElhaney said.
"We have had a woman whose kids attended Fort Gibson and we made
arrangements for them to stay there."

Webb says she realizes the pain she put her daughter
through.

"I think it hurt her, it hurt her a lot. She doesn't trust me," she
said. "For so many times, I told her I was going to be this way or
that way."

Webb, who is to get out of treatment in early May, said Tyler
(hopefully) will never remember times when his mother was on meth.

But Courtney?

"She remembers a lot," Webb said.

MONARCH offers counseling and group therapy for the children as well
as the recovering mother.

Even the young children need therapy to cope with their mother's
addiction, said Mary Blevins, MONARCH children's counselor.

"Mostly what we see is separation anxiety," she said. "These kids had
been placed in foster care or kinship care and most, for one reason or
another, have been exposed to domestic violence. When they come here,
we try to get them used to a structured environment."

Blevins said that in play the children may act out their frustrations
by showing aggression toward other children.

"We have to redirect them toward more positive expressions," she
said.

A monkey, a lion and a tiger painted on one wall seem to watch over
Talon and three other girls as they play dolls in the playroom. Talon
moves a toy shopping cart around the room before deciding she wanted
to play with a train, then a farm set.

"A lot of times we do structured programs, now it's just play," said
Michelle Foster, a children's technician.

She said the children could have been affected by their mother's drug
use if they have been neglected.

"They'd be neglected if the mother had been using drugs instead of
paying attention to the kid," Foster said.

Many children also have trouble trusting their mothers, even when they
get sober, Blevins said.

"As the children get older, you see more rebellious behavior," she
said. "It's trust issues and communicating with mom again."

Children born to mothers on meth also face numerous health problems
including stunted growth, tremors, elevated heart rates and skeletal
abnormalities, health experts say.

McElhaney said she could not say whether MONARCH children's medical
problems could be traced directly to meth use because the mothers
tended to abuse other drugs as well.

"I can say that babies born when their mothers are here are generally
healthy, the doctors say," she said.

Most of the women and children at MONARCH are on Medicaid and "doctors
all over town love our kids," McElhaney said.

Like Webb and Wallace, most women at MONARCH are from out of
town.

McElhaney said none of the 21 women at the Community Living Center are
from Muskogee. At the residential treatment center, two out of 19 are
from Muskogee.

"We get very few women from this town," she said. "There's too much
temptation to contact an old user buddy."

Women at the Community Living Center have more flexibility to come and
go than those at the Fredonia center.

"They do their job searches, they go to their children's school
parties," McElhaney said. "We highly encourage the mothers to attend
school functions."

Attending school functions, feeding them breakfast, watching them comb
their own hair. All are a part of a woman's recovery, too.

"It makes them realize their kids are a priority," McElhaney said.
"And it helps rebuild the relationship that the addiction broke down."