Advice for young mums and dads

Young parents from across the county can benefit from parenting advice and meet other young mums and dads thanks to the council and primary care trust working together.

Recently the government announced that local authorities needed to do more to reduce teenage pregnancies. In Herefordshire, where teenage pregnancies are relatively low, support is given to young parents to help them give their children a good start in life.

The county's rural nature can make young parents feel very isolated at a time when they need lots of support, both in terms of continuing their education and in terms of learning how to bring up their baby.

Thanks to funding from the Learning and Skills Council and Herefordshire Primary Care Trust, YMTB - Young Mums To Be - course has been running at the Greencroft Children's Centre in Hereford since April 2006.

Managed by Connexions, units of the course are led by midwives from Hereford Hospitals NHS Trust, Connexions, the youth service, health visitors, SHYPP and Hollybush Family Centre.

This enables the teenagers to work towards their NCFE (an equivalent NVQ level 1) award in Skills for Life Competence, while learning about pregnancy, birth, parenthood, healthy lifestyle, money management, IT and craft skills, as well as planning for their education, training and employment in the future.

Once the babies are born, the young parents continue to meet, networking and learning about their babies' development and needs.

The postnatal group is also run from Greencroft, and is run by health visitors and family support workers

The courses have been very popular, but it has been extremely difficult for young parents outside Hereford to get to the Greencroft Centre where the group meets.

Although pregnant teenagers have accessed the group using public transport, transporting babies with their parents has been a problem.

As a result, Herefordshire Council has purchased eight 0-4 year old car seats for Community First, which means that young parents from all over the county will be able to travel safely to Hereford with their babies for the cost of a local bus ride.

"The post-natal group meets once a week in Hereford and the young people who attend learn a great deal from each other as well as from the health visitors," said the council's teenage pregnancy co-ordinator Jan Coppinger.

"Some of our young parents are very isolated and it's good for them to be able to get together with other young mums and dads and share ideas and concerns.

"It's good for the babies too as the well being of parents has a direct effect on their child.

"Herefordshire has relatively few young parents and as they are scattered across the county, it's difficult to get them together.

"The council and primary care trust have come up with a simple solution that will help bring mums, babies and dads together once a week," added Jan.

It is anticipated the car seats can also be used to transport parents and babies to parent support groups held around the county's children's centres.