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"One Week!" TWTC case manager Earl Singleton shouted from the front of the room. Two women stood. One held an infant in her arms. The room burst into applause.
"Six days!" A young woman popped up from her seat, smiling proudly, as the audience whooped and clapped.
"Five days!" Singleton was not going to overlook anyone in the room.
"ONE day!!"
His point was clear: being drug-free is a day-at-a-time process. And each successful day is to be celebrated. This cold Friday afternoon, the women had one more reason to celebrate: the first annual reunion of the MOMS Program. Graduates had returned to inspire the women currently in the Program.
Within the past 12 months, each of the new women in the Program had landed in Cook County Jail for a drug offense. They had carried an unborn child into their cells. Because they had not been charged with a violent crime, the Cook County Department of Corrections offered them a chance to escape the confinement of a jail cell while awaiting trial.
With it came a chance to free their babies from the bondage of drugs: the DOC-sponsored MOMS Program at The Women's Treatment Center, a residential drug rehabilitation facility for women with infants and young children on the City's Near West Side.
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