Mountaineer Recovery breaks ground on newest pregnant women and children facility

Originally published in The Journal

MARTINSBURG — State and local leadership offered their gratitude for the facility’s dedication to the communities of the Eastern Panhandle Friday morning as the Mountaineer Recovery Center broke ground on its pregnant women and children’s facility, less than a year after opening its main facility’s doors.

Business Development Chief for Mountaineer Recovery Center Kevin Knowles said, in keeping with COVID-19 guidelines, the ceremony was small but marked big steps for the recovery center as it continues to try to offer locals struggling with addiction help in their own communities.

“It’s been one of the biggest struggles we’ve had but now we are able to place women and children a lot quicker and a lot faster,” Knowles said. “Due to COVID we had to move our groundbreaking from February but, being that it has increased overdoses, we made a decision to move forward so we could get things done quicker and faster.”

Knowles, in recovery himself for multiple decades, has shared many times the struggles those fighting addiction have faced, specifically women with families, adding that it has always been hard to place women with children or expecting children into recovery facilities because they simply do not have the tools needed to help these women.

Now, with the groundbreaking completed and true construction preparing to be underway, Knowles said the two-story, 12 apartment building will allow for 22 to 24 more beds for females and their children and will feature a garden and playground next to the center’s main building.

“We’re excited to participate in the first step of our five year plan so we can start building the foundation that women with children can start putting their lives back together for themselves as well as their children,” Knowles said.

According to Knowles, the center hopes to complete construction in mid 2021, should current world circumstances allow.

Plans for this latest facility were announced in the very last half of 2019, when Knowles shared the center had received an additional $3 million grant to build the women’s in-patient facility.

The new building will be built to the left of the existing building, on property that now houses a courtyard for patients, the two-story pregnant women and women with children facility would be constructed and would most likely feature suite-style rooms to best accommodate families.

Services offered by the center include outpatient treatment, a 28-30 day residential program, medication-assisted treatment, life skills training and peer recovery support services.

Knowles said in addition to the updated timeline for the pregnant women and women with children facility, Mountaineer Recovery Center’s five year plan includes utilizing the roughly 51 acres expanding behind the current facility to construct what Knowles called a “recovery village,” to which the women’s facility is just the start.

According to Knowles, the village would include residences for families of various shapes and sizes, community centers, a day care center and more so the center can offer true continuum care to all of its patients in whatever stage of their lives they might be in.