Family Forum / Parenting / Adoption / September 2009

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/30/labour-conference-teenage-mothers

A pox on 'poor houses' for teen mothers
Young parents need the carrot of job opportunities, not the stick of
anachronistically punitive supervised homes
Comments (113)

Camilla Chafer
guardian.co.uk,    Wednesday 30 September 2009 15.30 BST

As a former teenage mother myself, I listened to Gordon Brown's new
proposals on supervised housing with a keen interest. In his speech to
the Labour party conference, Brown declared: "From now on, all 16- and
17-year-old parents who get support from the taxpayer will be placed
in a network of supervised homes." He added: "These shared homes will
offer not just a roof over their heads, but a new start in life where
they learn responsibility and how to raise their children properly."

Given the context of a prime minister who is, as Martin Kettle
remarked, "going down" while desperately clutching at straws, I can't
help wonder if this proposal is merely a hastily cobbled together,
taxpayer-appeasing move targeting some of society's least fortunate
and most vilified, and one that will fail in practice.

It is, in fact, not a new policy. The idea was first mooted a decade
ago in what the Evening Standard's Paul Waugh terms "teen mums
Groundhog Day". Even the BNP was rather keen on the proposal when it
mooted the idea at its party conference. They suggested: "The homes
should not be 'institution' like, but at the same time there will be
rules which must be adhered to ... Failure to comply with the homes'
rules will result in the mother being sent to prison, and the baby
being taken in to care." This smacks of the mid-century Magdalene
sisters.

Brown's plan plays on the idea that a teenage mum is handed the keys
to a council flat, given a benefit book and told to push off. He
asserted on the BBC's Today programme that this doesn't work as it
leaves young parents in isolation and doesn't improve their lives. He
didn't need to say that Daily Mail readers resent subsidising them
too.

To me, though, the hostel scheme of bunching teen mums together in
social housing is uncomfortably reminiscent of the old homes for
"fallen women" – segregating young mothers as a moral example at which
the rest of society can point and stare. Haven't we moved on from this
sort of punitive moralism as a way of dealing with our social
problems?

Yet Brown insists that schemes like this do work. According to the
prime minster, two thirds of teenage mothers who do not have family to
care for them go into council housing, with the remaining third
already placed in supervised homes known as "foyers". About 8,000
teens already live in such homes and there are plans for 2,000 more
places.

Cost is certainly a factor driving the new plan to rehouse all teen
mums this way. Brown argues that the homes are cheaper in the long run
than providing individual homes as, with more support and daily
contact with services, the "outcomes" for these young mothers – in
terms of their own life chances and those of their children – are
better. Thus the scheme will include health facilities, though no one
is entirely sure what that means, and job clubs; this is admirable but
still riddled with problems. Lib Dem blogger Charlotte Gore is
critical: "They're New Poor Houses, which will be clean and basically
like a giant live-in Sure Start centre providing valuable employment
opportunities for social workers and lots of other people with
'outreach' in their job title."

Brown's speech also promised more free childcare for low-income
families – and this, surely, is the policy that matters. Ultimately,
it's not hostels but job opportunities that will enable young parents
to forge better lives for themselves and lift them out of the benefit
trap.

No one is advocating teenage pregnancy, but the old canard that some
young women get pregnant and have a child to get a council house and
better benefits is best bypassed by creating incentives for young
women to stay in school and move on to higher education so that they
can compete for better jobs. My fear is that homes for teenage mums
won't help them and will end up costing the taxpayer more. What would
make a real difference, and benefit society as a whole, is providing
these young women with the chance for meaningful work.