| Back
Rio
Hondo College News
MEDIA ALERT
3600 Workman Mill Road / Whittier, CA 90601 / 562-692-0921
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT:
Merle Enriquez Secretary
Department: Planning and Development
Phone: (562) 692-0921 Ext. 3412
Rio E-Mail:
MEnriquez@riohondo.edu
Article published: Friday, March 3, 2006
Whittier Daily News and San Gabriel Valley Newspaper
College to host `Baby City' Event at Rio Hondo to aid young
parents
By Tracy Garcia Staff Writer
WHITTIER - In a too-often repeated pattern, children removed from
abusive or neglectful parents and placed into foster care grow up
and become pregnant themselves, child welfare experts say.
"We don't realize sometimes that so many of these foster youth end
up homeless. And if they have a baby with them, the baby is taken
away," said Lydia Slawson, who works in Rio Hondo College's Office
of Foster and Kinship Care.
"They're in a double- whammy - they lost their first family and now
they could lose their baby. So they need a lot of support services
to help them."
To help provide that support, Slawson's office is helping organize a
new one-day conference this month. Dubbed "Baby City," it would be
for pregnant or parenting teens and young adults who were placed
into foster care through the county's Department of Children and
Family Services or probation.
According to officials with the El Monte-based Inter- Agency Council
on Child Abuse and Neglect of Los Angeles County, such teens often
repeat the cycle of abuse and neglect once they start having their
own children.
An ICAN task force developed the curriculum for the conference,
which will be held March 18 at Rio Hondo College.
The free event will feature breakfast and lunch, a raffle and
workshops and presentations on domestic violence, legal aid and
family law.
Representatives of several agencies, including WIC (Women, Infants
and Children), Project Cuddle, the First 5 Foundation, the
Children's Bureau, the Transitional Resources Center and Teen Line,
will Advertisement provide information about housing, legal issues,
child care, fathering and health resources.
Participants will be referred to the event through social workers.
They will be assigned a "buddy," who will help them with child-care
during the conference, organizers said.
Rio Hondo is the third Los Angeles-area community college to hold
the event, said ICAN program administrator Tish Sleeper. Previous
hosts were Pasadena City College and Mission College in the San
Fernando Valley.
Rio Hondo received a grant from the Kaiser Foundation and the
nonprofit Community College Foundation to host Baby City, Slawson
said.
Susan Forman, an ICAN volunteer and a local business owner, said
officials of nearly all of the community colleges the agency
approached to host a Baby City event indicated they had a need for
it in their communities.
"Whittier has a whole lot of issues related to pregnant and
parenting teens," Forman said. "This conference is just a drop in
the bucket in terms of addressing issues these kids are facing."
.
-RHC-
Back |
