Indianapolis Recovery Campus Lets Mothers Stay With Their Children

Volunteers of America Ohio & Indiana opened a 19-bed recovery house on Indianapolis's north side this month, built so mothers leaving addiction treatment can live with their children instead of losing custody during the first fragile stretch of sobriety. The new Legacy Recovery House campus at 6130 N. Michigan Road consists of three duplexes and a triplex, and residents can stay for up to a year while they rebuild work lives and community ties.

The campus shares a parking lot with VOA's Fresh Start Recovery Program, a 40-bed residential treatment program for women. Mothers who complete Fresh Start can move directly into Legacy Recovery House and continue using the on-site childcare, keeping one set of supports in place through the transition to independent living.

"This is our first campus model," Jennifer Martinez, senior vice president of clinical services for VOA Ohio & Indiana, told WIBC. "This is treatment — this is a point in time. Recovery is everything that comes after this." Martinez said the buildings were designed around trauma-informed principles, with an emphasis on light and openness.

Why living with children changes the calculation

For mothers in residential treatment, the end of a program is often the point of greatest risk. Housing, childcare, and a job have to be reassembled at the same time, and a placement that separates a woman from her children removes one of the strongest reasons to stay in recovery. Co-locating treatment beds with transitional recovery housing keeps the family unit intact while supervision and peer support continue.

VOA said the Michigan Road site was developed with the Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority, the Indiana Department of Child Services, and the Indiana Division of Mental Health and Addiction. The organization previously ran standalone certified Legacy Recovery House residences in Plainfield and Columbus, Indiana; the Indianapolis campus is the first to place a recovery residence and a residential treatment program side by side. VOA Ohio & Indiana has operated for more than 130 years, serving veterans, people leaving incarceration, homeless families, and people with substance use disorder.

Indiana's maternal overdose toll

The campus opens against a grim state backdrop. State reports show substance use is the top cause of death among new Indiana mothers, and overdoses contributed to about one-third of deaths among women during pregnancy and up to a year after giving birth, according to the most recent report from the Indiana Maternal Mortality Review Commission. That figure excludes intentional overdoses.

Providers who work with pregnant and postpartum patients describe the months after delivery as the most dangerous. Data analyzed by the commission found the risk of overdose drops during pregnancy and rises sharply after birth. Depression, anxiety, and hormonal shifts compound a relapsing illness, and mothers typically have only one postpartum appointment compared with as many as 20 before delivery.

"There are some estimates that between 80–90 percent of patients with substance use disorders have an additional behavioral health disorder or mental health disorder that has either been diagnosed or undiagnosed," Dr. Anthony Sanders, lead physician at Community Health Network's CHOICE program in Indianapolis, told Side Effects Public Media. Medication for opioid use disorder, a core part of medication-assisted treatment, is among the services that help mothers stabilize during that period.

One graduate's path through the program

Ashley Spillman, who grew up in Marion, Indiana, graduated from Fresh Start in December and moved to Indianapolis to restart. She told WIBC that staff made her feel reassured when she arrived, and that the program helped her work through the fear that she would not have help or support.

"There are people through every stage of the program that are willing to help you and be supportive, and they've never left my side," Spillman said. She said her son is now home with her, she is enrolled in college, and her Department of Child Services case is close to being closed.

A small answer to a wide gap

A single 19-bed campus does not close Indiana's shortfall in transitional housing for women in recovery. What the Michigan Road development tests is a design question other providers are watching: whether keeping mothers and children together, with childcare and treatment on the same block, produces better retention than a referral to scattered housing.

VOA has not announced plans to replicate the campus layout at its other locations. Its Plainfield recovery residence, which opened in December 2025, houses up to 17 women and their children.