Hope and Help for Teen Parents

Teenage pregnancy happens.

Even with abstinence education and encouragement, even with information regarding pregnancy prevention, teen girls have babies while still in high school.

Sometimes a teenage parent drops out of high school. Often this is the end to that teen’s formal education. She drops out to be the parent, and yes, usually it is the girl who drops out to care for her child. There may not be a relative able or willing to watch the child so she can go to school five days a week, and to do this for no charge. It can simply be too difficult, too expensive to find and schedule quality child care.

The St. Charles First Assembly of God Church offers teenage parents help with that through HOPE Ministries, a program that offers free daycare services for single, teenage parents who show that they are committed to finishing their education.

“Let’s not make a blessing into a punishment,” said Julie Russell, executive assistant at the church. 

Russell wrote the original vision statement for HOPE Ministries almost nine years ago. As an acronym, HOPE stands for Helping Others Pursue Education, but as Russell made clear to me the ministry provides just what the word says--hope.

Russell was a teenage mom herself. As an adult she volunteered for the Pregnancy Resource Center. She understood the challenge of being a teenage parent and knew how often teen girls were unable to finish high school once they became moms.

She knew what she called the often “outrageous cost of childcare.” Russell is a member of the church and has volunteered in many areas of the church. Then one day she realized that the, “church’s own nursery sat empty all week long.”

“As a church, let’s put action to our words, live out what we say, be there to help them” after the baby is born, she said.

St. Charles First Assembly of God supports this ministry financially and through the church's facilities and has from the beginning, when HOPE Ministries functioned with all-volunteer staffing. It has grown to include full and part-time paid positions. Russell was the first director.

Jeanette Staskewicz is the current director of HOPE Ministries. She gave me a tour of the daycare and the large rooms for infants, toddlers and children ages two and older. There is a small kitchen area arranged with a row of high chairs and an outdoor fenced-in playground. 

All the rooms were colorful and full of appropriate toys and things to do. I noticed the stackable and easily sanitized cots for nap time.

Since most high schools had finished their school year on the morning I visited, so there were just four children at HOPE Ministries.

Staskewicz introduced me to the three toddlers playing while Heather Rouse, day care teacher, was feeding and rocking the infant.

The children were enchanting.

I want to be very clear that there is an application process for HOPE Ministries and space is not assured. Preference is given to high school students, yet college students are accepted. It depends on the number who apply and the openings available. Staskewicz told me that two college students worked out their semester schedules so their children could share one opening. She said that there is the desire to see HOPE Ministries grow without accepting child care assistance money from the state.  

That is why HOPE Ministry hosts fundraisers, such as the second “Steps and Strides for Success” 5k and 10K walk/run at 8 a.m. on June 18 in Frontier Park in St. Charles.  The event will include a one-mile fun run and–my particular favorite choice–a “Sleep in for Success” option. All donations are welcome and appreciated.

Russell and Staskewicz both told of students who have been a part of HOPE Ministries and have completed college degrees and are now accountants or nurses or teachers.

Each student who finishes high school, a training course or earns a degree that provides them a career and employment has made a wonderful achievement. It is the students’ achievement and success, of course.

Yet, along their way there was a foothold of hope with HOPE Ministries. I believe in hope to uplift, to motivate, to change.

Having this safe place for their child at no cost may have been enough hope for these teen parents to face the next challenge and move on with hope.