Youth Support

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Youth Support

• A Multi facetted service

Out- reach
Teen Parent
YSH
PTSD
Projects
BRIDGE
WEBS
BOOKS
CONF
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Youth Support

• A Multi facetted service

Teen Parent
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Looking Back

• 30 years ago started professional work with
  adolescents
• 20 years ago study cohort began
• Youth Support arose from this

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A Positive Outcome
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Early Work

• The first study was produced in 1986.
• Concerns and issues at that stage fell into the
  following categories

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Rates and Reasons
Statistical analyses compared teen fertility to
that of older women
With time this shifted to comparisons across
cultures
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Why?

• Somewhere buried in the argument surrounding
  contraception and the young many of the real
  issues got lost
• Its not just sex and its not just
  contraception.

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Scientific Phase

• Physical risks, antenatal care and the lack of it
  and whether young mothers could be as good
  parents as older women
• It shouldnt be allowed

Higher Perinatal Mortality Increased level of
Prematurity and Low birth Weight Poor Antenatal
Care
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Humanitarian Phase

• A Culture of Poverty
• In 1986 and in 1987 International Medical
  Womens Federation meeting in Sorrento, Italy
  presented paper entitled Teenage Pregnancy - a
  culture of poverty
• it was with dismay that I found myself writing
  about the same subject ten years later in 1997
• now in the new millennium - nothing has changed.

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A Culture of Poverty

• Governments repeatedly talk of policies to
  reduce teenage pregnancy rates ..
• Attacking the symptom instead of the disease of
  deprivation and poverty

Poor housing Overcrowding Unemployment
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Family Life

• Typical pregnant girl is a member of a large
  single parent family
• 70 do not live with both natural parents
• 16 have no mother
• 65 have no father.
• 20 of girls in care.

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Disadvantage

• Disadvantaged circumstances influence prevalence
  of -
• dietary inadequacy
• antenatal anaemia
• perinatal mortality and low birthweight

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A Spiral of Deprivation

• Early pregnancy can result in a spiral of social
  deprivation

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Why does the situation persist?

• So why does the situation persist and the
  problems repeat from generation to generation ?
• after 15 years - 10 still have no housing
• Training and work opportunities are poor

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Baby Fathers

• Baby fathers fade out of the picture

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Family Patterns

• A third of pregnant schoolgirls are following in
  the pattern of their mothers - that means that
  two thirds do not.
• Hence it is not so much teenage pregnancy that
  forms the cycle of trans-generational repetition
  - but the deprivation that fosters early
  childbirth.

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Deprivation ? Pregnancy

• what is the mechanism whereby deprived
  circumstances lead to pregnancy? Emotional
  psychological issues are the vehicle.

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Deprivation ? Low Self Worth

• Deprivation lowers self worth, expectations and
  instils a sense of inability to achieve a
  positive future - parenthood restores self image
  raises expectations and provides a tangible
  achievement - a baby

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The Self Esteem Study

• A self esteem measure
• A 'deprivation score' looking at life
  experiences
• A 'sexual' scale estimating degree of sexual
  experience or sexual trauma

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Self Esteem

• Pregnancy partially protects the individual from
  threats to self worth but the effect is temporary

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Why is pregnancy such a potent source of self
value?

• In pregnancy a girl identifies with the ideal
  mother which she never had and can never be.

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Alternative Value System

• ... Seen from the young girl's viewpoint,
  pregnancy may not be so undesirable. Certainly it
  brings heartache and hardship, the extent of
  which should not be underestimated, but for
  under-privileged girls with little education and
  non existent job prospects, motherhood is a
  fulfilment.

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Repetitive Patterns

• Why do girls repeat their pregnancy
  experiences?
• Girls with multiple relationships can progress
  from one relationship to another and repeat the
  experience without seeming to learn from the
  previous situation

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Recovery from trauma
 
IMPACT
RESOLUTION
LATE
EARLY STAGE
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Pregnancy as a Maturation Experience.

• The pregnant girl can identify with the foetus
  and concretise her experience of the inner
  child in her developing baby this allows her
  another chance to be loved this time by the
  ideal mother.
• There are situations where pregnancy seems to
  afford an opportunity for psychic growth
  maturation and personal development.

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Long Terms Study 15 years
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Patterns of Relationships

• 50 of girls had only one significant
  relationship in their lives.

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Care system

• Girls in the care system had more pregnancies
• Their boyfriends stayed around for shorter
  periods.

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Children in Care

• Girls who had been in care had more of their
  children removed and fared worse on every
  parameter researched

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Children Problems in Care

• Their children had more problems at five, ten and
  fifteen years. First born males fared worst.

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Youth Support House
Teen Parent
YSH
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Reason for Admission

• Pregnant 21
• Parenting difficulties 97
• Mental Health problem 40
• Learning disability 9

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Past History Residents

• Abuse
• Physical abuse -79 (54) Sexual abuse - 64(20)
  Incest 30 (4) Self Harm 35
• Substance abuse
• Drugs 35 Alcohol 28
• Crime and violence
• History of criminal activities 41
• Prostitution 14

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Residential Children

• Neonatal Problems
• Died 3
• SIDS (cot death) 2
• Foetal Alcohol 8
• Drug withdrawal 7

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Children - 91 Abused

• Nature of abuse
• emotional 81
• neglect 83
• failure to thrive 65
• sexual abuse 14
• Presentation
• bruising 45
• burn 7
• fracture 7
• head injury 6
• suffocation 4
• munchausen 6

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Prognosis - Adult FactorsResidents Rehabilitated
Together

• of total
  Rehabilitated
• All cases 100 42
• Violent Partner 59 45
• Abused 80 41
• Learning Disability 9 38
• Alcohol 29 36
• Drugs 37 34
• In care 67 33
• crime 39 32
• History of violence 60 31
• Self harm 36 30
• Personality Disorder 57 28
• Prostitution 15 23
• Severe PDPsychopathic 26 9