|
The
Program
Vivian Smith Teen Parenting Program is a community-based
case management program built on both individual services
and support group activities.
Parenting
Teens have many and varied needs. The goal of this program
is to ensure that parenting teens are able to graduate
from high school and become self-sufficient adults and
good parents to their child. This is done by supporting
the parenting teen in the following areas:
|
•
|
Physical
Needs and Living Situation
|
|
•
|
Family
and Attachment Issues
|
|
•
|
Safety
|
|
•
|
Social,
Cultural and Spiritual Needs
|
|
•
|
Emotional
and Psychological needs
|
|
•
|
Health
Needs
|
|
•
|
Educational
and Vocational needs.
|
The
program supports 10-12 parenting teens and their children
from selected IPS Schools. Participants are connected
with community resources, including the Child
Care Development Fund (CCDF) to provide assistance
with daycare. Appropriate follow-up is administered to
assure that the teen parent is staying in school and is
parenting appropriately and that the child is meeting
his/her developmental milestones. The program also works
on establishing positive and nurturing relationships between
the teen parent and child and essential connections in
the teen parent and child’s lives.
Why
should the community help teen parents?
According to the national Campaign to
Prevent Teen Pregnancy, teen mothers are less likely
to complete high school (only one-third receive a high
school diploma) and only 1.5% have a college degree
by age 30. Teen mothers are more likely to end up utilizing
public assistance (nearly 80 percent of unmarried teen
mothers have to access public assistance).
Children of teen mothers are twice as
likely to be abused and neglected, as are children of
older mothers. Babies born to teens are at an increased
risk of low birth weight and the attending health problems:
mental retardation, blindness, mental illness, deafness,
cerebral palsy, and infant death. Children of teen mothers
are more likely to do poorly in school, more likely
to drop out of school, and less likely to attend college.
A teen who drops out of school after
the birth of her first child has a better than 50% chance
of having another child within two years, making it
even more difficult to attain self-sufficiency. This
hurts the entire community. Helping young parents stay
in school and prepare for a productive adulthood is
not only cost-effective, it's the right thing to do.
Who
was Vivan Smith and how did this program come about?
Vivan
Smith was an Indianapolis volunteer who was active in
her church (First Meridian Heights Presbyterian), as
well as in the Indianapolis Urban League, the League
of Women Voters, and other community efforts. When she
died in 1984, Mrs. Smith left a trust fund with instructions
to use the income to start community programs. The income
from Mrs. Smith's trust provided initial start-up funding
for the program, which is named in her honor. The Vivian
Smith Teen Parenting Program opened in August 1989,
to provide comprehensive services to address the needs
of teen parents and their babies.
|
