- April 19, 2024
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The Vince Carter Sanctuary, a substance abuse rehabilitation center in Bunnell has closed its doors. In its place comes Project Women Assisting Recovery Mothers, an existing treatment organization that is moving to Flagler County from Daytona Beach.
Several reasons prompted the change, said Deborah Zeoli, president of the Stewart-Marchman-Act Behavioral Center. First, the Vince Carter Sanctuary was not state-funded, so patients had to pay privately. As a result, the center was not as a successful as hoped, Zeoli said.
Second, Project WARM, a Stewart-Marchman-Act Behavioral Center program that serves pregnant and parenting women with substance abuse problems, is currently operated in a 16-bed facility in Daytona Beach. The residential treatment program has seen great growth, but its current facility is too small.
Finally, Project WARM secured state funding last year, which will not only help pay for its expansion, but will also help support patients. For this reason, Project WARM is more sustainable than the programs at the Vince Carter Sanctuary, Zeoli said, calling the redesign a "win-win situation."
Starting April 1, the center will be a residential treatment center serving addicted women, mothers and their children. In the meantime, the facility in Bunnell is being renovated. Chief among changes is the construction of a new child development center.
When renovations are complete, Stewart-Marchman-Act Behavioral Healthcare will relocate its current Project WARM clients, who are currently housed in Daytona Beach, and all of the Vince Carter Sanctuary’s female clients from the center’s adult residential treatment programs.
In total, the new facility will serve 52 women and any of their children younger than 6 years old.
Project WARM houses women for six to 12 months for addiction treatment while focusing on needs specific to pregnant women and women with young children. Women attend therapy sessions during the day, and evenings are focused on developing parenting skills. They are also given vocational education.
The program arose in the 1980s, when there was what Zeoli called an "epedmic" of cocaine babies in the area. They were taxing the entire spectrum of social services, from hospitals to jails. Project WARM not only helps women recover and give birth to drug-free children, but it also helps parents seek treatment without losing custody of their children, since children come to treatment also. This encourages more women to get help.
And, unlike the Vince Carter Sanctuary, Project WARM can work with uninsured women on a sliding payment scale because it is backed by state funding, Zeoli said.
In 2007, NBA player Vince Carter and his mother, Michelle Carter-Scott, donated $1.6 million to Stewart-Marchman-Act Behavioral Healthcare for a 100-bed substance abuse treatment facility.
Despite the restructuring of the facility and its name change, Carter-Scott said in a statement that she and her son are happy knowing the facility will continue to help people.
“All Vince (Carter) and I wanted to do, and continue to want to do, is help people,” she said. “The women and babies of Project WARM deserve a safe, conducive environment to work on their recovery, parenting skills, vocational development and their lives after the program.”
