Helping young mothers make their own decisions
Even in the best of circumstances, parenthood is the toughest job around. Now imagine that you are a teenager who has spent most of her life in foster care, and suddenly you find out you are pregnant. Without the experience of growing up in a stable, secure home, how will you know how to be a good parent?
By age nineteen, 32 percent of young women in care report having at least one child, as compared to 12 percent of their peers not in care. (National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, Fostering Hope: Preventing Teen Pregnancy Among Foster Care Youth, 2006).
And yet services to support young mothers in care and their children are scarce, and at the most basic level, young mothers in care do not often know what their rights are with respect to the custody and placement of their children. To address this gap in information, we have created “Rights and Resources” for pregnant and parenting young women in foster care.
Rights and Resources takes the form of a physical pocket-sized handbook that focuses on national information and state-specific information on our website. An electronic version of the printed handbook is also available.
We hope to get Rights and Resources into the hands of as many young women in foster care across the country as possible.
Initial distribution of the handbook will be through the 22 members of the Crittenton family of agencies, located across the U.S. Many of these agencies serve pregnant and parenting girls and young women who are or have been in foster care, juvenile justice or in another systems of care.
The handbook and online state information are designed to empower girls and young women by providing information about custody and placement rights due under federal and state laws. Girls and young women in foster care want and need to understand their rights and have access to resources in order to make an informed decision about their lives and the well-being of their children.
Your article is ranking at the top of AOL internet search in searches on this subject. Kudos.
Thanks Attorneys MN, Minnesota! Greatly appreciate it.