Keeping Families Together: Tamassee Hope Village Explores New Ways to Preserve Families During Substance Use Recovery
Substance use disorder is responsible for up to 80 percent of child welfare interactions1, yet most residential substance use treatment programs for women with children serve only the women themselves, possibly resulting in negative effects on the relationship between mother and child. In the small rural mountain community of Tamassee, South Carolina, Tamassee Hope Village (formerly the Tamassee DAR School) has created an innovative new program, called Starlight, as a way to keep mothers and children together through recovery.
What makes Starlight at Tamassee unique?
Starlight focuses on providing a strong therapeutic environment for families, which research shows to be a key factor in effective recovery programs.2
Four specific factors make the program distinctive.
- Starlight is one of the few residential substance use recovery programs in Upstate South Carolina and Western North Carolina that serves mothers and their children.
- The program offers a broad range of supports in addition to direct recovery services, including those for health, mental health, education, employment and other aspects of a healthy, stable life.
- Starlight provides on-campus wrap-around services and education for children, so that they can heal alongside their mothers.
- The program spans three years rather than the typical 180 days offered by many residential recovery programs, providing more time and support for families to achieve stability.
How is Starlight delivered?
The Starlight program is delivered in four phases. Mothers focus on recovery, life skills and spiritual growth, while services for children focus on therapy and education. Phases I and II span the first year, with mothers receiving core introductory programming and time to assess the fit between the program and their family during the first three months. The remaining nine months of that first-year focus on intensive therapeutic recovery. At the end of their first year in Starlight, mothers graduate from Phases I and II and move into Phase III, with a focus on education and job skills. As they move into year three, families are ready for Phase IV and begin to prepare for the transition to independent living.
What does The Duke Endowment hope to learn from Starlight and Tamassee’s approach?
“We are interested in learning how the intensity and breadth of Tamassee’s program might eventually improve trauma symptoms, support sustainable recovery, strengthen parent-child attachment and enhance long-term outcomes for participating families, including prevention of foster care entry,” said Tamika Williams, director of the Endowment’s Child & Family Well-Being program area. “We feel that Tamassee’s commitment to identifying and adapting its services to community needs and the rigor they applied to creating this program are promising.”
A good fit for developing and testing innovative approaches
Two aspects of Tamassee’s Starlight program make it a good fit for the Endowment’s Child and Family Well-Being strategy of developing and testing innovative approaches to preserving family stability. First, as a 107-year-old institution, Tamassee has a track record of adapting to meet community needs and a culture of using data and reporting for continuous improvement.
Second, Tamassee applied many practices from the field of implementation science to create and launch the program on its campus. The Tamassee team studied similar programs across the Southeast, co-created Starlight with local stakeholders and partners, carefully assessed the staffing capacity needed to implement the program, and paid close attention to ongoing quality improvement.
Preliminary outcomes informing next steps
Starlight is still early in its development, and its numbers are small, but some preliminary outcomes are encouraging. Starlight began in 2022 with seven participating families. To date, the program has served 27 mothers and 41 children. As of October 2026, eight mothers had graduated from the program and six others had either regained custody of their children from the Department of Social Services or were in the process of reunification.
After four years of experience with Starlight, Tamassee is now focused on adapting its approach based on what it has learned. Funds are in place to renovate two residential cottages, and plans include increasing staff to serve up to 20 moms at a time. This expansion will provide Tamassee with a larger population for data gathering, allowing the organization to further refine its approach while helping more families.
“The factors contributing to family instability are complex and intertwined. So are the solutions that result in long-term family unity and stability,” said Williams. “Tamassee is expanding its services once again and building an innovative program that is responsive to need. Doing that well always takes a great deal of thought, preparation and practice. As they apply more rigor and gather more evidence, they will continue to hone and strengthen the Starlight program. We look forward to following their progress and learning alongside them to inform other efforts the Endowment undertakes throughout the Carolinas.”
Video link: New Hope for Families Troubled by Substance Use
For a more in-depth look at the Starlight initiative and how the Endowment is monitoring its progress, click here.
Footnotes
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4894838/
Neo, S.H.F., Norton, S., Kavallari, D. et al. Integrated Treatment Programmes for Mothers with Substance Use Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Interventions to Prevent Out-of-home Child Placements. J Child Fam Stud 30, 2877 – 2889 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-021 – 02099‑8