Fostering teenage mothers

Teenage mothers need help if they’re going to succeed. Anna McNamee looks at a fostering scheme that provides family support

To see Julie cooing over her little girl now, it’s hard to imagine anyone ever questioned whether or not she would be a fit parent. But they did.

Julie left school at 15. After a period in care she was back living with her mother but the atmosphere was hardly peaceful. The way Julie remembers it, she and her mum were involved in endless alcohol-fuelled rows. A year later she became pregnant.

‘It was actually planned but when you’re young, you don’t realise what you’re getting yourself into – like the responsibility, and it is a big responsibility. You just think about having this nice baby and dressing it up in frilly dresses.’

Her local social services agreed. With no qualifications and an unstable home-life, Julie would have faced an uphill battle trying to provide a secure and loving home for her baby. The statistics show that it’s hard to succeed. Babies born to teenage mothers often end up in care.

‘They wanted to put me into a hotel-place,’ she says referring to the local mother and baby hostel. ‘I went there and it was really rough. I just didn’t like the look of it at all. But I had been in a foster home before and I quite liked it, so when they asked me if I would like to be placed with a family I said yes.’

Julie was five months pregnant when she moved in with Pat Crinion. Pat, whose children were grown-up and left home, agreed to foster her as part of an initiative aimed at providing young mums with support and accommodation during those difficult first months of being a parent.

The overwhelming success of this project has convinced the National Foster Care Association that these arrangements can help break the cycle that results in many girls born to teenage mothers becoming pregnant in their teens themselves.