Maine Perspective Front Page
Cooperative Extension
Teen Parent Program
The University of Maine Cooperative Extension's Teen Parent Program for Knox County has been selected as one of five model initiatives nationally and will be featured in an upcoming promotional video being produced by the USDA'S Children, Youth and Families At-Risk (CYFAR) Initiative, based in Washington, D.C.
A film crew was in Rockland Oct. 6, interviewing participants and volunteers in the program. Also on hand were Extension educator Nadine Reimer, parent educator/outreach coordinator Jackie George; parent educator Caryn Drapkin; Donald Saastamoinen, coordinator of the Young Fathers Project; Doug Babkirk, Cooperative Extension program administrator; and Judith Graham Colburn, the grant project director and principal investigator. The video will debut at the CYFAR Conference in Tucson this March.
The Teen Parent Program is one project funded, in part, through Cooperative Extension's Maine State Project to Strengthen Community Programs, Children, Youth and Families At-Risk Grant. The grant began in 1995 and continues through 1999 with a total award of $750,000.
The Teen Parent Program is designed to improve the lives of young parents and their children through the efforts of caring, trained adult volunteers and parenting education. The voluntary educational and support program is offered to first-time young mothers and the men who are in father roles to their children. Through personal visits, certified parent educators help parents problem-solve, demonstrate ways to engage children to build healthy parent-child relationships, and provide information on child development and parenting.
Knox County's Teen Parent Program began in 1989 with a small grant from the state Department of Human Services. The first years were spent in needs-assessment and programming to groups of teen parents. Volunteers worked primarily to provide transportation and childcare. With additional state and federal funding, the program is able to offer young parents more individualized assistance through home visits. Now serving teen parents in Knox County are two certified parent educators and 59 volunteers trained to support young parents through pregnancy, delivery and the early years of a child's life.
More than 30 pregnant or parenting mothers ages 14-24 are participating in the Teen Parent Program, which was initiated by Reimer. Reimer taught high school in Kansas for six years, and there saw the need for support for young mothers. Now a child development specialist, Reimer continues to study the cultural and class issues of poverty, and how poverty changes society's expectations of low-income parents.
The Young Fathers Project focuses on young men up to age 29, many of whom are first-time parents. The program, which started four years ago, now serves 25 young fathers and fathers-to-be for the first three years of their youngsters' lives. The only Extension project of its type in Maine, the goal of the project is to foster the continued healthy involvement of a father in the life of his child.
The Teen Parent Program in Knox County is being recognized, in part, for the outstanding efforts it is making to sustain the program after the CYFAR monies end in 1999. In the past two years, the program has developed a governing board with 15 community members, including a retired child development professor, a local pediatrician, nurse midwife, teen mother, representatives from several collaborating agencies, a lawyer, pharmacist, journalist and several of the trained volunteers. This active group of supporters currently raises about 10 percent of the program's budget. s
The five model programs in the national video were chosen for their effectiveness in addressing the needs of at-risk children, youth and families. CYFAR programs are grounded in a philosophy of collaborative, community-based, high-intensity programs that require citizen involvement in all aspects. They reflect a partnership of universities, USDA and counties, to the benefit of community-based programs to address such critical issues as welfare reform, volunteerism and workforce preparation.
The video will debut the CYFAR Conference in Tucson this March. Other audiences for the video including Extension administrators at national, state, district and county levels; Extension and other university faculty; state and federal legislators, USDA CYFAR collaborators, and children, youth and family networks and community groups throughout the country.