One of just two mother-and-baby drug treatment centres in the country is being closed due to cuts to public services.

Noami House in Bristol was set up in 2009 by the charity One25, which has been providing support for women exiting sex work and drug addiction in Bristol for 16 years. The house provides women somewhere safe to stay while receiving help for drug addiction and allowing them a proper chance at motherhood.

One mother only found out she was pregnant two days before starting a five-month prison sentence for assault, she had also been addicted to heroin and crack for two years and sleeping rough before her sentence. Now, having spent 10 months at the centre she is drug and alcohol free and will move into a flat with her daughter next month.

Since being opened it has produced promising results, of the 18 women who have passed through its doors, 10 left drugs free and with their babies. Those who have their babies taken into care can still receive treatment and are given advice about keeping in touch with their children.

The charity began to struggle with costs when it lost two government grants, notably since the Tories came into power in May 2010.

In an effort to change its funding model, Naomi House re-launched as primary treatment for 12-18 weeks rather than up to 23 months, which is drastically cutting the time it can rehab the women. However this caused it to lose its entitlement to housing benefit from the local authority as a result.

It isn’t that the need for this service wasn’t there, in fact quite the opposite. Women in these situations need as much support as possible through their pregnancy and as they start into motherhood. With pressure to change after high-profile tragedies like Baby P, social services are under pressure to remove children and put them in homes without trying to offer these women the help and treatment they need to be able to take care of their children properly.

Now women in the area who give birth while working as a sex worker or addicted to drugs will stand much less chance of being able to keep their children or indeed receive any help or support.

This is Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ in action. The charities which his party praises so much are equally the victims of the Tories’ slash and burn. It is appalling that we have to rely on charities to carry out this vital work in the first place – losing them means many people have nowhere else to go.

Instead of cutting to refloat a broken system, we should demand that services which are forced to close should be nationalised under the control of the workers and users. Companies which threaten to sack staff should be nationalised without compensation to the bosses – Halifax has sacked tens of thousands of employees since it was bought by the taxpayer.

The government should be putting money in to support these women who are in incredibly vulnerable situations and helping them into parenthood rather than abandoning them and their communities to povertyr and crime.

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