Substance use disorder can affect nearly every part of a person’s life, which means recovery often requires support beyond treatment alone.
Age, mental health, housing, family responsibilities, and how easily they can access care can all shape that path.
A young adult may struggle to find care designed for their transitional and developmental stage of life. A pregnant or parenting mother may need treatment while trying to keep her family together.
The support each receives has to reflect their realities.
The Children’s Foundation of Michigan is working with organizations to create stronger pathways to recovery for young people and families by addressing gaps in substance use disorder care.
Two recent grants are doing just that, working from different angles: CNS Healthcare is building a treatment model around the unique needs of youth and emerging adults, while MiSide is designing an integrated approach to recovery, housing, and family support for pregnant and parenting mothers.
1) CNS Healthcare: Meeting young people at their stage of life
The years between adolescence and adulthood are very evolutionary. Young people may be finishing high school, starting college or a career, and becoming more independent, all while they are still developing socially and emotionally. It can also be a period when experimentation with drugs and alcohol develops into something more serious.
For a young person struggling with substance use, recognizing there may be a problem or asking for help is an important first step. Then they must find appropriate care, which can be another issue.
“Youth and young adults tend to be a gap in service overall,” said Carlynn Nichols, Chief Clinical Officer of Children, Family, and IDD Services at CNS Healthcare. “They don’t fit within services for children, and often, they don’t fit within services for adults.”
With a two-year, $1 million grant from the Foundation, CNS Healthcare is developing an Intensive Outpatient Program specifically around the needs of youth and emerging adults experiencing substance use disorder. The program will begin in Wayne County, with plans to eventually replicate the model in Oakland and Macomb counties.
The program will provide about nine hours of support each week for young people who need more than traditional outpatient care, while allowing them to continue with school, work and daily life. It will also address substance use and mental health together, rather than requiring young people and their families to navigate separate providers for different needs.
“We don’t determine which one came first,” said Stacia, CNS Healthcare’s Substance Use Disorder Program Manager. “We treat them both simultaneously.”
2) Supporting recovery and families together
For pregnant and parenting mothers, recovery may be intertwined with housing stability, caregiving responsibilities, and keeping their families together. When treatment programs are not designed to accommodate children, seeking help can create another challenge.
MiSide is addressing those challenges through Wellspring, a supportive housing development that broke ground in Southfield in October 2025, with 60 units for people in recovery and 12 affordable townhomes for families. A $50,000 Foundation grant is helping MiSide design a coordinated approach that brings housing, recovery services, and family-centered care together for pregnant and parenting mothers and their children.
“For mothers working toward recovery, having a safe place to live and knowing their children are supported can make all the difference,” said Jamie Wojahn, director of Resident Services at MiSide. “We want to create an environment where women don’t have to choose between getting the help they need and caring for their families.”
The planning process will help MiSide determine how that care will work in practice, including what services will be offered, who will provide them, which community partners will be involved and how families will be connected to the support they need. It will also establish a timeline for putting the program into place, with an emphasis on collaboration among organizations and coordinating care across services.
Creating solutions that last over time
While CNS Healthcare and MiSide are designing different approaches, both are being developed with sustainability in mind. Foundation funding gives organizations the resources to do the critical work of designing, building, and launching programs that each include a plan for how they can continue over time.
For CNS Healthcare, that means building the infrastructure needed to launch a program that can eventually be sustained through insurance reimbursement and replicated in additional communities.
“The Children’s Foundation of Michigan is literally giving us money to build the program up front,” Nichols said. “All the energy it takes to get from zero to a full team is what the dollars allow us to do.”
MiSide’s grant supports an earlier stage of that same process, providing the resources to thoughtfully design its model while determining how it can be implemented and supported for the long term.
In both cases, the goal is to use philanthropy not only to fund services today, but to help create stronger systems of support that can continue serving young people and families into the future.
Solutions shaped by people’s needs
Recovery is not one-size-fits-all. These approaches are different because the people they are designed to serve have different needs. But both reflect a broader effort to make substance use disorder care more responsive to the realities of young people and families.
By supporting approaches that consider the whole person and the circumstances shaping their lives, the Foundation is helping create more meaningful opportunities for young people and families to find the support they need to recover and build healthier futures.
