The lack of State support for teenagers who become pregnant was highlighted yesterday by a pioneering group of school-going mothers in their first annual report.
The Waterford Student Mothers' Group pointed out that there was no agency, voluntary or statutory, providing a support service to deal with the needs of mothers within the school system.
The group, made up of 15- to 19-year-old secondary school students, says nothing is being done to help keep young mothers in full-time education, thus breaking their long-term dependence on social welfare.
The group is the first of its kind in the State and has been meeting weekly since October 1997. It is run by a committee made up of adults and some of the teenagers.
Its co-ordinator, Ms Bernadette Phillips, said young mothers who wished to remain in education were required to carry out "a huge balancing act" in combining the two roles. While more and more pregnant girls were opting to stay single and keep their babies, rather than give them up for adoption or get married, services had not been put in place to reflect this change.
Members of the group identified a range of obstacles which either interfered with their education or prevented them from continuing after their babies were born.
These included the lack of access to childcare facilities due to cost and an inadequate number of places; lack of time to study; difficulty finding suitable accommodation while in third-level education; and a lack of counselling, support and guidance services.
The fact that grants are based on the income of the student mothers' parents, as opposed to their own incomes, was also highlighted as an obstacle.
"As education holds the key to breaking dependence on the State in the long term, it is imperative that every assistance is given to encourage people who are in this situation to become independent and create for themselves and their children a decent lifestyle and life chances," the report says.
It says the assistance to date "is full of short-term solutions without vision - quick fixes that add up to nothing more than keeping these young parents down at a level from which it is incredibly difficult to rise upwards. Under these short-term approaches, cycles of poverty thrive."
It also calls for the provision of a counselling service for pregnant teenage girls. "The group has heard the experience of a girl being told that her pregnancy test is positive over the phone by a doctor's receptionist. As finding out this information can be very traumatic, a counselling and support service could make the world of difference to a scared, confused and shocked teenage girl and her family."
Introducing the report, the Fianna Fail TD, Mr Brendan Kenneally, praised the group for its initiative and said other areas were looking at its experience.
