Creating a Social Program

The program that I decided to create is a community outreach program for adolescent girls who are dealing with an addiction, pregnancy, or homeless; which will be named Whitney’s Transitional Center for Adolescent Teens. Here at Whitney’s, we believe that anyone can achieve their desired goals, hopes and dreams with the assistance from a strong supportive system.

The focus of Whitney’s Transitional Center for Teens, is create loving, safe and supportive environment were adolescent girls can receive immediate assistance, short term emergency shelter and he resources needed for a permanent foundation.These girls have to endure the demands and pressure of parent-hood, adolescence, addictions and homeless. Especially if they have aged out of the option of being in foster care, the possibility of finding a stabled home will be a challenge. If the teen choose to be in an intimate relationship/many will stand the chance of repeating with multiple births. Because of all the stress of a newly family, many of the relationship will not last.

Here at Whitney’s Transitional Center for Teens, we believe that by establishing our program we will decrease the number of teens living on the streets Whitney’s House will seek to provide a support place for teens regardless of what they are facing. Services will range from helping with parenting skills, job placement, and child bearing. This is a very emotional time for those pregnant, according to the webpage TeenHelp. com because teen moms face premature births, low birth weights and learning disabilities.Our aim is to provide educational support while increasing their self-esteem to lay the path to promote higher educational and vocational learning.

Many teens are not able to remain at home with their parents, either for reasons of overcrowding in the home, abuse, neglect, financial difficulties, or the unwillingness to follow the house rules. The timeline we decided on for the beginning of this program is 6 months upon approval of proposal. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, reported that a total of 329,797 babies were born to young women aged 15-19.This was a reported record low for U. S. teens in this age group, falling to 31.

3 per 1,000 teen females. This is the greatest decline for Hispanic teens, with a drop of 11% from 2010. There has being several contributing to teen moms listed below:* Teen moms will face greater family instability, and lower incomes.* They provide less emotional support to their children within the home environment.* Teen moms are more than likely to find parenting stressful, to display dysfunctional child bearing practices that have the possibilities of leading to neglect or malnutrition. Children of teen moms have lower math, reading, and vocabulary test scores that those with older moms.

* Teen moms are less likely to finish high, or to continue with a higher education.* The CDC reported that teen moms are more than likely to endure more health problems. This is obviously a cause for concern for all; involved. It is important to acknowledge that a strong supports and services can help to intercept the negative outcomes related with teen moms/adolescence additive to drugs.

At the end of the day teen moms want to provide, and to be the good parents; they just need the necessary support systems and tools.Youth residing in the foster care system are at a higher risk of engaging in risky sexual behavior, to include earlier sexual contact/with various partners, and an earlier age of first pregnancy/ and to be introduced to risky illegal drug use outside the foster care system. It should be noted that living in foster care or being homeless is not necessarily by itself an implication for these risky behaviors. The majority of these teens that are housed in the foster care system or become homeless because of abuse, neglect, or abandonment; and these risky behaviors could be associated with those experiences.

Mission, goals, and objectives: To advocate locally and statewide, to find preventive measures for preventing teen pregnancy/drug abuse, to increase opportunities for youth/young parents, to empower young adults to make healthy decisions about relationships, sex, parenting, and life. To increase job opportunities for teens, and to develop focus groups for teens to determine what interventions would be useful in preventing/participating in these unhealthy behaviors.It is our desire to engage in tasks that promotes higher levels of academic achievement, intellectual development, emotional stability, physical well-being, and to encourage self-sufficiency. This will be accomplished by providing the necessary tools for success, academics, health/medical and career/employment education.

The Whitney Transitional Center, will offer anyone in need of services to the make the necessary community connections; while increasing/improving their self-worthiness.These services will be available for anyone, in need of a loving environment while providing them with the necessary tools for life. Teen unsafe behaviors I. Some teens engage in abusing drugs, and participating in pre martial sex; which could results in an unwanted pregnancy. Teen drug abuse and teen pregnancy has become too much as a norm now a days. II.

Several causes for them engaging in these types of behaviors I. There are several causes for adolescences behavior, and the lasting effects that can have a life changing experience. (a) affectionSome may have a less than normal home life, and are looking for affection from anywhere they can receive it. (b) acceptance(c) living environmentServices Rendered(a) counseling classes(b) support teams(c) pregnancy prevention classes(d) a requirement to finish high school/or GED(e) child care/health care(f) mentoring(g) life skills classes(h) job training(i) community involvement(j) services to ensure a smooth transition to independent living. Funding is a critical issue for Whitney Transitional Center and the effects operations, staffing and the services provided.

Money to fund the programs typically comes from federal, state, private sources as well as from contributions from residents. Whitney Transition Center will receive funding from state, county, or city government agencies. Federal and state will used to cover operating expenses. Another federal funding source is the U.

S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), grants. Since we will be providing shelter for the homeless as well; the residents will meet the criteria for receiving funds from HUD.This may be an impossible task to address all the problems that adolescence is facing from pregnancy, parenting teen’s needs, homelessness, and addictive drug users. Collaborations and partnerships provide opportunities to increase capacity and meet the needs.

Through the partnerships that the Whitney Transitional Center, has developed can provide supports and resources to encourage the following:(1) healthy relationships/partnerships-develop a sense of self-worthiness and to reinforce the right to healthy relationships with partners, peers, family, and the community; as well with making better informed choices.To teach skills to resolve conflict, solve problems, and negotiate.(2) Financial stability-to help adolescence work towards financial freedom by encouraging higher education, to invite professionals into the center to teach how to obtain and manage their finances.(3) self-sufficiency-help young women to develop basic self-sufficiency skills, so that they will be able to make the transition to independent living, learning how to accessing resources/services as needed without assistance from a case worker.

To encourage increased independence, to be a part of the community thriving as a productive citizen; rather than being a problem for society.(4) Housing stability-make community connections of affordable housing, in safe neighborhood, and continued housing stability and independent living upon completion of the training provided by the Whitney Transitional Center. In addition, private charities, foundations, and individuals frequently are making donations.Whitney Transitional Center will also host several fund raisers throughout the year, to help with covering the cost of operating the center. To help keep the operating cost down, we will be utilizing volunteers.

The staff will receive continuous training, so that we can provide the best possible service. Here at the transition center, we will form two teams to ensure that the funds are being spent for the true intent of providing services for the adolescences.These teams will work as a peer review system, to eliminate the chance of any misuse of funds. The type of staff/volunteers, we will be seeking here at the Whitney Transition Center; are those individuals who have the heart for this particular population, and the desire to make a difference in the lives of the adolescence teens in our community. Our vision is to provide service where lives are transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, and every young lady learns to make wise decisions/informed choices for improving their lives.The rules for staff will be simple, to treat each individual entering into the center with dignity and respect; to display empathy not sympathy, and to always utilize the golden rule.

To treat people the way you would want to be treated. Strategic Planning will be implemented to evaluate success or failure of Whitney’s Transitional Center, which will complement the mission/vision of the center. Strategic planning is an organization’s process of defining it’s strategy; or direction, and making decisions on allocating it resources to pursue this strategy. This will determine the direction of the center.

We will set overall goals, and then develop a plan to achieve them; mainly short term objectives. By putting this type of plan into action will inform the executive director areas that are in need of improvement. Strategic planning will also inform the community, the success of the center and how funds are distributed. The mission for our strategic plan will be to empower youth to achieve higher education, and to be self-sufficient. The overall goal will be to reduce the number of homelessness, put a dent in teen births, and to reduce teens from abusing drugs.

The goals set for the strategic planning for Whitney Transitional Center will be to educate/engage teens and comminutes to initiate opportunities for positive youth development. To implement ongoing awareness of teen pregnancy/homelessness, and teens abusing drugs by at least 30%. Whitney Transitional Center provides a wide range of services and referrals to additive teens, pregnant, job training educational support, parenting teens, and homeless or lack of a supportive home.Ongoing rigorous implementation evaluations can lead to improvements in services offered, staff quality, and resident satisfaction, and they could maximize and to serve those youth most likely to benefit. Evaluation results can be the beginning of a foundation, for building and gathering evidence that will be used to improve the effectiveness of the practices and programs that work at Whitney’s Transitional Center. We would like to increase family stability, to end this cycle of behaviors.