State budget cuts threaten programs for teen parents

Vidya Rao

Amelia Lopez just didn’t know. She was in seventh grade, and what little she learned about sex at Sacred Heart Catholic School didn’t prepare her, not really, for the realities of raising a child.

She still remembers the moment when she looked at the pregnancy test and it read “positive.”

She was all of 14 years old.

“I didn’t understand because I was actually happy about being pregnant — I felt like I was playing house,” she says. “But I had no idea what I was getting into.”

Lopez grew up in Roslindale with her mother. She had Amelia when she was 18 years old. Amelia’s father was not around much; nor is the father of her child.

“When I became pregnant, my mom felt like it was living the nightmare all over again, and that I was going down the same road as her,” Amelia recalls.

Like thousands of other teen mothers across the state, Lopez struggles to balance the adult responsibilities of parenthood while still being a child herself.

The teen pregnancy struggle is also being played out at the State House as lawmakers deliberate Gov. Mitt Romney’s proposed budget. Organizations such as the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy are lobbying the state for more money on awareness programs as well as other services that aid teen parents with housing, education and healthcare services.

But the Romney administration has lumped all of what they describe as “risky behavior” — substance abuse, violence, smoking, teen pregnancy — into one budget item that includes only $4 million in funding.

That amount is about $1.5 million less than the $5.5 million that was used to fund teen pregnancy awareness programs alone in 2001. Last year, the awareness program was slashed by 80 percent to $990,000.

One thing is clear. Neither the Romney administration nor community activists want the teen birth rate to increase. As it is now, Massachusetts has one of the lowest teen birth rates in the country. According to the most recent statistics, the state in 2003 had a birth rate of 22 per 1,000 for mothers between the ages of 15 and 19. That rate was 46 percent lower than the national average.

“We believe the best way to reduce teen pregnancy is to address all of the risky behaviors,” said Donna Rheaume, a state Department of Public Health spokeswoman. “We are trying to reach young people through a comprehensive approach that increases overall self-esteem and self-management skills.”

That sort of thinking is all well and good, but budget cuts have a way of eliminating programs that actually work.

“What is clear,” says Noah Berg, executive director of the Massachusetts Center for Budget Policy. “is that in the past this governor has not set issues like education, local aid and teen programming as priorities in the budget — when there was a huge surplus, funds were spent on massive tax cuts instead of being reinvested in communities.”

In 2001, when Lopez was pregnant with her son, she was connected to Healthy Babies Healthy Families, an organization that provides resources, counseling and referrals to teen parents.

“Healthy Families connected me to everything — they referred me to Just A Start House for emergency shelter and helped me get a child care assistance voucher so I didn’t have to drop out of school to take care of my son,” Lopez explains.

During that time, Healthy Families was receiving $21 million from the state to provide such services. For fiscal year 2006, its budget was slashed by $9 million.

The result is tangible. “Programs have been forced to decrease their services dramatically,” said Patricia Quinn, executive director for the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy. The cuts also meant less staff and outreach workers.

Aswalos House, a transition program in Dorchester run by the YWCA, provides another example of he impact of state budget cuts. Aswalos provides housing, health service and education to young women ages 17-21, in exchange for progress towards a high school diploma or GED.

“A year ago, we lost $50,000 in state funding and had to cut a staff member,” says Program Director Karen Parkman. “Our current staff has had to work above and beyond what can be expected of them in order to keep the program afloat.”

Parkman went on. “The bottom line is that there is a huge need across the board for teen programming,” she said. “There have been so many budget cuts because pregnancy rates were decreasing — but that was a result of the heavy investment made in programming…”

Quinn and other teen advocates say that support programs are imperative to young parents’ success—especially to keep them in school. According to a 2004 report released by the Massachusetts Center for Budget Policy and the Home for Little Wanderers, a third of teen parents drop out of school.

Lopez told herself that she would not be one of them.

She enrolled in an alternative education program for pregnant teens at Crittendon Hastings House in Brighton. “At first I was doing really badly in school, because I was so stressed out about everything, but the counseling and support I had really helped me through the transition,” she says.

She transferred to Boston English High School, where she is now a senior. In an effort to curb drop-outs, Boston English along with several other high schools such as Madison Park provide on-site daycare for students with children. At Boston English, there is space for 21 children, and teen parents are required to spend one class period at the children’s center with their children and working with a counselor.

“I know a lot of girls who have had to drop out because there is not enough space in the day care,” says Lopez.

Lopez is one of them. Every day, she must commute by taking three buses and two trains from her home in Somerville to day care in East Boston then to school in Jamaica Plain.

Despite these challenges, Lopez continues to pursue her education — and credits the programming that she’s been able to take advantage of for keeping her on track.

“The support programs that I went to were essential for me to survive,” she explains. “I don’t think any teen mother can get along without them. They told me about resources that I didn’t even know existed — they saved me.”

Lopez is now finishing her senior year, and has already been accepted to several colleges, including Regis, Salem State and UMass Boston, but she is holding out for Northeastern University.

“Northeastern is my dream school—I want to be a nurse,” she says. “I was so scared and felt so alone when I found I was pregnant. I didn’t know what was ahead for me, but I knew I would find a way out.”