Some weeks ago, I noticed a big change had sneaked up on us -- a good change. First, I want to go back to our 2015 annual report. We made a pledge to do something about a terrible problem: the infant mortality rate among our clients living around Guadalupe Street was far higher than the rate elsewhere in the United States. Women were becoming pregnant, and the children were not being born alive or weren't being born at all, due to late-term miscarriages or stillbirth or failure to thrive in the first month. Most who did survive wound up in CPS custody.
It was a horrible situation, and we went to work on it. We tried several things, but none worked until we called the men and women in the community together. First, we urged them to have fewer babies, because they were not ready. That message didn’t resonate. A second message did: children were dying because we weren't taking good care of the pregnant mothers. At that time, it was common for the community to say to newly pregnant women, “You stay right here with us on the street and we’ll take care of you.” That failed to recognize problems of stress and drugs, especially a new drug at that time called K2 or synthetic cannabinoid.
So -- we made it a community goal that women would spend as many months of their pregnancies off the streets as possible. As a result, it is now common for girls who get pregnant to say, “Oh, my goodness, I have to get off the streets,” and for them to seek resources, including friends, family or supported housing. Over the next 18 months -- well into 2017 – they made solid progress. We taught them about prenatal care for themselves and their unborn, and how to make plans for nine months ahead. Still, the newborns often wound up in CPS custody, as has been the case for almost all my 20 years working with homeless young adults.
It’s 2020 now (oh boy, is it ever!). We still have about one pregnancy a month – or about nine pregnant clients at any given time, but something amazing has happened. We began hiring more diverse members to our team. We hired more women, and they formed a women's group, and the women's group has been particularly supportive of pregnant women and new mothers. I noticed about a month ago that we have six women under our care whose children are living at home with them. That’s far more than ever!
Yes, it's still a struggle for our moms, and perhaps it's not ideal, but they are now stable enough they can keep their kids. (There usually is some inspection by CPS from time to time.) I'm really proud of our clients for owning the challenge of making enough change that they can keep their children with them and raise them! This is how we break the cycle of street youth and street dependency.
This is how poverty is solved -- one family at a time. I am often asked why there are homeless young adults. And the answer is the breakdown of the family. I don't want to blame anyone, but one way or another the homeless kiddos do not have the same support their peers in college or at home have – the same housing, supportive parents, educational opportunities and so on. The difference is the families of origin of our clients don’t have the tools or resources or the ability to give that support.
We continue to work toward solutions. And for now, we celebrate the fact that clients under our care have kids at home with them! Thank you for supporting our work and being involved with us. It truly does make a difference! Change is why we love working with our homeless young adults. The future is very bright for them -- when they claim it. And we love being guidance counselors as they move through this journey and mature and claim their futures!
-- TERRY
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