Teen Moms Need Help ...

A few years back, a social worker deposited a pregnant teenager at MacLaren Hall, then Los Angeles County’s emergency shelter for foster children. The girl was still there five months later when someone drove her to the hospital to deliver her baby. She and the baby returned to Mac, as the chaotic and often-violent warehouse for kids was known. But the same social workers who let this pregnant girl drift for months swooped down while she breast-fed her newborn. Mac was no place to raise an infant, they announced, as they took her baby away.

MacLaren Hall closed a year ago, but the cycle of broken families begetting more broken families goes on. A bill before the state Legislature would give teenage mothers a chance to do better by their children.

Every year in California, hundreds of teenage girls in foster care become parents. No one knows exactly how many because agencies such as Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services aren’t required to keep track. Without that information, teen parents stay invisible. Social workers don’t feel pressured to link these girls to the services they need to be successful parents. That help includes day care so teens can stay in school, as well as hands-on parent training. If a girl becomes pregnant after entering foster care, the county does not consider that baby its dependent unless or until a social worker decides the new mom can’t handle her child and removes the baby.

SB 1178, sponsored by state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica), would instruct caseworkers to offer these fragile young families the services they need. The bill also directs counties to keep teen parents and their babies together if that’s what the teen wants and if doing so is best for both of them.

Improving the odds for these families also means getting extra help to foster parents willing to care for them. Many of these substitute parents are afraid of the extra responsibility an infant brings. When the teen they’ve fostered has a baby, they often demand that either the new family leave or the teen mother give up her baby. Those girls who run away with their babies from foster parents often end up on the street.

SB 1178 goes before the full state Senate soon for a vote. Counties already make available most of the services that Kuehl’s bill calls for; her goal is to prod them to more diligently link teen parents and foster caregivers with this support.

Having a baby while in middle or high school can ruin the ambitions and prospects of a teenager from a well-off, two-parent family. Multiply that challenge for foster teens. But with help, some can become responsible parents. The alternative is teen mothers who repeat the failures of their own parents, and more babies growing up in foster care.