Wee Care: reaching teenage mothers and changing their lives - outreach program offered by Jewish Family and Children's Service of Philadelphia

Children Today, May-June, 1989 by Priscilla R. Rosenwald, Gwen Porter

WEE CARE: Reaching Teenage Mother and Changing Their Lives

Tasha didn't think she could get pregnant. The term "teenage" mother barely fits her. She is closer to childhood than adulthood, having just entered her teen years. But her baby is due in a few months. Marcella was in the ninth grade when she got pregnant. The young man--who also fathered another child--then sauntered through the neighborhood and schoolyard bragging about his exploits.

Nellie is from a Hispanic family. The father of her child is twice her age, and his wrists and neck are covered with gold, the spoils of drug trafficking. He brings her gifts, and supplies her--and her mother and older sisters--with drugs.

Tasha, Marcella and Nellie (not their real names) are the third generation of their families to head single-parent families. Like their mothers and grandmothers before them, they live in a culture where men come and go, women raise children alone, and each generation repeats the self-destructive pattern of the one before it.

But because they've been part of a Philadelphia program called Wee Care, they just might be among the 25 percent of teenage mothers who, according to sociologist Frank Furstenberg and colleagues, break that chain of poverty and welfare.(1)

What interventions will make a difference? What are the factors that program a young woman toward independence and self-sufficiency? What are the most serious obstacles she must overcome? And how can we reach this population at risk?

In January 1986, Jewish Family and Children's Service of Philadelphia received a grant from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs, to reach out to the city's pregnant teenagers and/or teen mothers to encourage them to join groups where they could discuss drug and alcohol issues in relation to the health of parent and child. Although funded with drug and alcohol prevention money, this effort was seen as an intervention program in teen pregnancy. Its overarching goal was to break that cycle of teenagers giving birth with little or no prenatal care, of at-risk infants and woefully inadequate, indeed abusive, parenting. It was apparent to the funding community that drug and alcohol abuse was an integral part of the cycle.

Jewish Family and Children's Service has, since 1969, worked with Philadelphia's young children through Project PRIDE.(2) Project PRIDE counselors reach about 6,500 schoolchildren each year in a primary prevention program that teaches 5th-, 6th- and 7th-graders to make healthy decisions, develop strong, positive self-images and, hopefully, to withstand the pressure to become involved in the drug abusing society which surrounds them.

In January 1986, Project PRIDE was one of three agencies to receive funds to develop, over a 2-year period, a comprehensive program for pregnant teenagers. The program continues to receive funds from the Department of Health of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

This article outlines what we have learned about this population during these three years and presents our recommendations for successful intervention.

Development and Implementation

The three agencies--the School District of Philadelphia and the City's parochial school system, in addition to Jewish Family and Children's Service--were mandated to form groups all over the city. By the end of the first year, there were 28 Wee Care groups meeting in 20 agencies. At the end of the second year, 30 groups were meeting in 23 agencies.

The program name chosen, Wee Care, was self-explanatory and had more than one meaning. We designed a poster which showed a pregnant girl and carried these words:

"Having a Baby? New Parent? You're excited and a little scared, and there's a lot you don't know.

Wee Care

A New Program for pregnant teenagers and teen mothers. And FATHERS.

A FREE SERVICE JUST FOR YOU."

We began by asking target agencies--which included drug and alcohol treatment centers, maternity programs, community centers, counseling services and other programs where troubled teens could get help--to display our poster. In each facility, we established a liaison with a staff person who would refer pregnant teens to Wee Care. We respected territoriality, and developed seminars appropriate to each facility.

Radio and television public service announcements, targeted to our specific population, were used to reach young pregnant girls directly.

Staffing

A major criteria for Wee Care counselors was the ability of the client population to identify with the counselor and to use her or him as a role model. One counselor was a black woman who had become a mother at 15 and dropped out of school. Today, she holds an MSW from Temple University, is an accomplished and talented artist, a strikingly attractive and poised woman who owns her own home and is a solid member of the middle class. Another is a Hispanic woman who also had her first child in her adolescence and has succeeded despite serious obstacles--obstacles similar to those being faced by the teenagers. Many of the counselors were the only "successful" members of their families. They knew where these pregnant teens were coming from; they had been there. And they could say to these children who were soon to be mothers, or were already mothers, "I did it. So can you."