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SIGN OF THE TIMES: The real stories behind the headlines

If you had asked 14-year-old Vanessa Boateng a few months ago whether it was easy to bring up a child, she would have nodded her head enthusiastically.

After all, it had not seemed to be too much of a hardship to baby sit her 8-month-old sister.

Now, when asked the same question, the 14-year-old Londoner shakes her head in a vigorous ‘no’.

“Looking after a child is hard work,” Vanessa confided last week, as she took a break from playing with a child at the Kintore Children’s Centre in Southwark, south London.

“You need to give them your attention a hundred per cent. You have to come down and talk to them at their level. You have to play with them and put your time into them. “

“If I had a baby, I couldn’t go out anymore. I’d have to stay home and look after the baby. And you have to have money to buy nappies and clothes and food. You also have to take care of them when they wake up in the night. Before all this, I though it would be easy,” she said.

‘This’ refers to a teen pregnancy prevention and development project, run by the London-based charity, Teens and Toddlers in nine London boroughs and several rural cities, known for high pregnancy rates.

First established in the UK in 2001, the programme pairs teenagers in schools with individual children aged 3 to 4 in a nursery setting, which sees both groups meeting at least once per week for 20 weeks or 5 months.

The toddlers get special attention and respect while teens work with children and learn what it takes to raise them. Via classroom sessions with two facilitators and a counsellor, the selected teenagers also boost their positive development with discussions on subjects such as confidence, self esteem, fulfilling aspirations, anger management, sexuality and relationships.

For 19 weeks, Vanessa has been going to Kintore every Friday to play and work with a 3-year-old toddler named Summer.

“Since I have been coming, I’ve noticed that what we do reflects on kids. We can teach them how to do stuff and they need our total attention because they learn from us early.”

“The aim is to get the child and teenager to build a relationship. We teach them that it’s a massive responsibility and that toddlers have feelings too. We are trying to teach them commitment and about the responsibility involved and that you shouldn’t bring a child into the world until you are ready,” said Suzanne Carter, Research Officer at Teens and Toddlers.

The programme has passed these lessons onto more than 1000 adolescents in England in the last 7 years and rewards them with credit toward getting a national award in Interpersonal skills level 1 and with certificates in achievement and attendance.

The project, which has touched the lives of more than 1000 adolescents, is seeing good results - and a drop in teen pregnancies rates among its participants.

“At the end of the sessions, we ask who will leave school and start a family and nobody says so because drive the thought that it will cost money and energy,” said Candace Lewis, teen development class facilitator at Kintore.

Statistics also show the teens mean it. “We have found really low teen pregnancy rates in our sample,” Carter said, referring to findings from a Teens and Toddlers’ retrospective study done in July 2007.

The study looked at pregnancy rates and the teenagers’ attitudes to sexual health and showed that pregnancy rates among teens, who have been through the programme and found that only 2.1 % of them became pregnant after the programme.

This is well below national teen pregnancy rates of 4.1 % and well below high teen pregnancy rates (ranging from 4.1 to 6.8%) in the high risk boroughs in which the programme operates.

“The study also shows they have really good attitudes to sexual health as well. Many have also become more confident,” Carter added.

Gabriel Ifederu, who looks after a 3-year-old named Holly, agreed, telling The Voice he is more outgoing now after helping the usually quiet and introverted Holly reach out to her classmates.

Carter and Lewis believe that the presence of boys in the programme also make a big difference to the toddlers, some of whom know only their mums. Gabriel, a 14-year-old participant, agreed.

“They get to see how males look after children and learn that it is not only females who look after children. Some things only a man can teach you. I think it is good that I am coming here because if some children don’t have male role models, they can learn off me and from other male nursery teaches.”

Published: 25 February 2008
Issue: 1309

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