How can teenage parents, faced with the responsibility of looking after a new baby, coping with unfamiliar household chores and the churning emotions of adolescence, be encouraged to participate in education, training or employment?
It is a question to which the government has been trying to find an answer. The Social Exclusion Unit's report on teenage pregnancy, published in 1999, set out a 10-year national strategy to tackle the causes and consequences of teenage pregnancy. Its key goals are to halve the under-18 conception rate by 2010 and to increase the participation of 16- to 19-year-old mothers in employment, education or training to 60 per cent.
Teenage mothers face many obstacles in continuing their education or returning to it, but top of the list is often the thought of leaving their child and the extreme difficulty of meeting the cost of child care. Many lack confidence and are isolated from other members of their family and their peer group. Their problems are often compounded by housing and financial difficulties.
Among the initiatives aimed at helping them with these problems are Sure Start Plus programmes which provide intensive support to pregnant teenagers and teenage parents under 18 (including fathers); Connexions; and the Care to Learn initiative's financial support for child care so teenage parents under 19 can continue in, or return to, learning or training.
Sure Start Plus, launched in April 2001, is being piloted in 20 sites with high rates of teenage pregnancy over a five-year period in England. The various projects offer practical help with issues such as breast-feeding, cooking on a budget, managing money, relationships, building confidence and help in stopping smoking. Connexions, which provides personal advisers to ensure that teenage parents have support and someone with an overview of their ambitions and needs, collaborates closely with Sure Start.
Feedback from the pilots reveals a variety of approaches to motivating young mothers to return to learning. Greater Merseyside's Young Mums To Be course, designed to tackle this reluctance, is a 12-week training programme equivalent to NVQ level 1 that covers areas from antenatal care to basic skills. In Tyne and Wear, an outreach group for young parents gives them access to locally based training courses.
Eighteen-year-old Adele, from Bedfordshire, has a one-year-old daughter and was 30 weeks pregnant when she started work-based learning in October 2002. Her personal adviser recommended the Young Mums To Be course, but Adele was initially reluctant. She says: "I was given a lot of support because at first I didn't want to leave my child with a stranger. I visited a few registered childminders and chose one I was really happy with. I gained a lot from the course and would not have been able to access the training without my child care being paid."
One Sure Start Plus adviser reported working very closely with two 16-year-old parents where there were concerns about domestic violence and the mother's ability to parent the unborn baby. The child was placed on the at-risk register at birth. The adviser helped them both to find appropriate housing, enrol on college courses and to sort out child care and benefit arrangements. The baby was subsequently removed from the register as social services were pleased with the baby's progress and happy about the way the couple had settled into their new roles. Both parents have now volunteered as Sure Start Plus "activists" and the young mother is particularly keen to train as a mentor for other young women, especially in breastfeeding, says the report.
Factfile
Useful Sites:
ChildcareLink provides details of local childcare providers in England and Scotland, plus general information about childcare
www.childcarelink.gov.uk/index.asp
Care to Learn is an organisation specialising in helping teenage parents with the cost of childcare so they can continue learning
To find out if you are eligible for an Education Maintenance
Allowance go to
www.dfes.gov.uk/financialhelp/ema
Connexions is a guidance and support service for 13-19 year olds that aims to keep young people engaged in effective learning and subsumes the responsibilities of the former Careers Services connexions.gov.uk
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