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Welcome to Teen Parent Connections!

Teen Parent Connections provides programs that encourage positive life style choices to empower young people and assist them in planning for a healthy future. If you are 18 and under and you're pregnant or already have a child, Teen Parent Connections can help you have a healthy baby, stay in school, budget your money, plan a career, and be the best parent you can be!

The Teen Parent Connections program is designed to minimize the adverse consequences of adolescent parenting for mother and child by promoting healthy moms and healthy babies, encouraging positive parenting practices, delaying subsequent pregnancies and promoting self sufficiency.

Statistics

• Less than one-third of teens who begin families before the age of 18 ever earn a high school diploma, while 40% of females who give birth by 15 do not complete 8th grade.¹
• Half of all unmarried teen mothers go on public assistance within four years of their child's birth and 42% of all mothers receiving assistance began families as teens.²
• Over 25% of teen mothers give birth to a second child within 24 months.³
• In 2004 more than 50,000 teens - 4% of all females age 15-19 years - gave birth in California.⁴
• The birth rate for Hispanic teens age 15-17 years was more than twice as high as the birth rate for all teens age 15-17 years (49.7/1,000 versus 22.4/1,000).⁵

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Our Mission

• To use case management to enhance, through association with families and community resources, the health, educational potential, economic opportunity, and self-sufficiency of adolescents during pregnancy and parenthood, and to promote healthy family relationships.
• To develop nurturing relationships in which case managers and adolescents served by the program can work together to ameliorate the untoward effects of early pregnancy.
• To promote the development of collaborative, integrated systems of care to support the adolescents during pregnancy and parenthood, support the children, and help these adolescents make healthy lifestyle choices.
• To respect the unique culturally defined needs of our various client populations and communities.

Ten Reasons to Keep the Focus on Teen Childbearing, Child Trends, November 2003. Cal SAFE Fact Sheet, January 2004, Sonoma County Office of Education. No Time for Complacency: Teen Births in California, Constantine N. & Nevarez C.R., Public Health Institute, March 2003. No Time for Complacency: Teen Births in California, Constantine N. & Nevarez C.R., Public Health Institute, Spring 2006. Hispanic Teen Pregnancy and Birth Rates: Looking behind the Numbers, Ryan, Franzetta & Manlove, Trends Research Brief, Febuary 2005. ^top

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