Sure Start is a government initiative which began in 2000, soon to be replaced by Children’s Centres. St. Michael’s has been involved with it from the beginning in the Lambeth area. The aim of Sure Start is this: to work with parents-to-be, parents and children to promote the physical, intellectual and social development of babies and young children – particularly those who are disadvantaged- so that they can flourish at home and when they get to school, and thereby break the cycle of disadvantage for the current generation of young children. Its targets include reducing the numbers of mothers who smoke during pregnancy, reducing the numbers of workless households, and reducing the number of children who are referred to A and E during the first year of their life.

For the Sure Start scheme, St. Michael’s employs three workers for teenage parents. One started by making contact with young mums in the area through home visiting. She then established a support group which met in a St. Michael’s house. Many of the young mums were shy and withdrawn needed coaxing to join the group. Gradually they started to attend, slowly grew in confidence and began to talk about all sorts of topics. There is now too a much needed and thriving group for fathers, who greatly appreciate these get togethers, both for the support they receive, and for the chance of taking their children out.

In the Summer of 2004 we arranged a youth exchange. This involved taking a group of 16-year-old young women from a local school within the Sure Start area to Sweden for one week and hosting a similar group from Sweden in October 2004. Many adults have written about the reasons for the teenage pregnancy rates but few young people have had the opportunity to comment. Sweden was chosen because it has much lower rates of teenage pregnancy than the UK. The full report is yet to be completed but findings written by young people for young people are about to be published. We are grateful to the British Council, the Teenage Pregnancy Unit and Lambeth Endowed Charities for supporting this project.