Taken from: http://www.redding.com/news/2009/jun/28/shasta-county-teen-birth-rate-hits-four-year/


As the Shasta County teen pregnancy rate rises to the highest level in four years, proposed cuts to teen parenting programs couldn't have come at a worse time.

In 2007, 271 babies were born to teenage mothers in Shasta County at a rate of 37.9 per 1,000 women ages 15 to 19, an increase from 32.3 the year before, according to Shasta County Public Health records. California's teen birth rate increased from 2005 to 2006 but fell slightly in 2007 to a rate of 37.1.

Until 2005, the teen pregnancy rate had been on a steady decline nationwide since the early '90s. The U.S. teen birth rate for 2007 was 42.5 births per 1,000, the highest rate since 2002, according to National Vital Statistics. While no one is sure why the teen birth rate is on the rise, many are concerned about where the increasing number of pregnant and parenting teenage girls will turn for help as their options are whittled away.

Cathy Wyatt, director of Northern Valley Catholic Social Service (NVCSS) in Shasta County, said the organization's Teenage Pregnancy and Parenting Project (TAPP) has been in and out of the state budget over the past few weeks and until a budget is passed, they won't know whether the program can continue.

The program provides counseling services to pregnant and parenting teens, connects them with prenatal care, child care, transportation and other assistance programs, while helping them with everything from baby clothes to learning how to potty train their child. As it stands now, the program faces budget cuts at the least and, at most, elimination, she said. Either way, until a budget is passed, the program will not function.

Also on the chopping block is the Cal-Learn Program, which helps teen parents enrolled in the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) finish high school. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed eliminating CalWORKs, a proposal that was shot down by the Legislature.

One of the only programs not up for elimination is the California School Age Families Education program (Cal-SAFE), which provides child care and parenting programs to encourage parents to stay in school. The program had a 15 percent reduction in last year's budget and another 5 percent will be cut this year, Christina Schlueter, fiscal analyst for Cal-SAFE, said.

Aside from the 169 teenagers in the TAPP and Cal-Learn programs at NVCSS, 139 pregnant and postpartum teenagers are in the Women, Infants and Children food supplement program, said Kathey Kakiuchi, program manager for the maternal and child health division of Shasta County Public Health.

Kakiuchi said risk factors for teen pregnancy are abundant in Shasta County and include poor school performance, poverty, growing up in a single-parent household and having a mother or sister who got pregnant as a teen.

With a high school dropout rate of 17.4 percent, an unemployment rate of 15.1 percent, a poverty rate of 14.5 percent, and a teen birth rate that has been higher than the state's nearly every year since 1992, Shasta County has all the necessary ingredients for a continuously high teen birth rate.

As programs to help teen mothers face cuts and eliminations, it is more important than ever to work to prevent teen pregnancies from happening in the first place, said Mary St. John, regional director of community and education services for Planned Parenthood: Shasta-Diablo.

Comprehensive sex education and communication needs to be taught to both teens and their parents, and teens in Shasta County need to be given a reason to wait to have children, she said.

Having goals for the future, such as careers or college, and deciding what kind of person they want to be is important to help teens make smart choices about sex, she said. Along with that is healthy communication skills, St. John said.

"A teen can know everything about chlamydia, but if they don't know how to use a condom or how to abstain, it doesn't matter," she said.

Planned Parenthood offers a resource center with information on communication, planning for the future, sexually transmitted infections and healthy relationships. It also has a program called Family Pact, which offers free contraceptives and basic reproductive health assessments to individuals who qualify financially or need to receive the services confidentially.

But Family Pact, too, might experience cuts, St. John said.

"Last year we didn't project any cuts and they eliminated the Teen Smart outreach program and reduced other programs and basically cut my staff in half," she said. "It was completely unexpected ... we just have to wait and see."

St. John said she expected the program cuts to have a ripple effect and ultimately result in the continued rise of the teen birth rate.