Strengthening Adolescent Families Through Empowerment - SAFE

This Is SAFE

Strengthening Adolescent Families through Empowerment (SAFE) Program is a therapeutic teaching foster care program for pregnant adolescents and parenting adolescents and their children. These young women are DYFS involved females between the ages of 12 and 21, who are pregnant or already have a young child. They are in need of stable, nurturing homes due to their normal support system’s inability to care for them. These are licensed family homes that offer these young women services to assist them in parenting effectively and learning to live independently. The focus of SAFE is to provide licensed, trained foster homes for these young women and their children, where a licensed social worker and nurse educator will offer the necessary skills to maintain the young mother and child as a family unit. The goals of the program are for mothers to progress to independent living with the skills and ability to parent safely and care for her child, graduate from high school, learn the skills needed to obtain and maintain a job that will sustain both mother and baby.

Who Is Eligible?

These young women and their children come from various backgrounds and may have many obstacles to overcome when they enter the SAFE program. With the assistance of their social worker, foster family and nurse educator, these young women are motivated to become good parents, are determined to continue their education, and possess the potential to gain the skills necessary to remain with their child and go on to provide themselves and their child with safe, stable and nurturing lives.

Services Offered

While in the SAFE program, these young women are given the tools to learn how to successfully live independently within their community and to raise their children. They receive pre-natal education and care, parenting education, a high school education, vocational skills training, work ethics and independent living skills training. Services also address behavioral and emotional functioning so that they can form healthy relationships with their baby and healthy social relationships in their communities. Family relations, including birth fathers and relatives of the young women, are maintained and strengthened through visits and contact through phone and/or mail, according to the young woman’s service plan, in which she has input.

This program optimizes the strengths and potentials of these young women to help them overcome the barriers they have encountered. Employment workshops, cultural outings and activities with other young women in the program help prepare everyone for parenthood, a career, and the self-confidence needed for independent living, being a good role model for your child, and a desirable employee in the workforce.