Continuum of Care

On Track for Healthy and Productive Lives

Inwood House’s Continuum of Care is a proven, successful program that provides education and support for pregnant and parenting teens. The program, which serves primarily young women but also includes services for fathers, is designed to:

• Increase young parents’ sense of self-worth and self-efficacy
• Improve the health of teen mothers and fathers and their babies
• Improve family relationships and build a network of support
• Improve outcomes for education and employability
• Reduce the incidence of repeat early pregnancies, child abuse, and neglect

Findings from a four-year study of the Inwood House Continuum of Care, underwritten by a national demonstration grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found outcomes significantly better than local and national norms for our teen parents. One year after delivery:

• 92% of our teen mothers were still in school or had graduated
• Nearly 100% had custody of their baby and had the father in regular contact with the child
• Nearly 100% had health insurance, had their babies fully immunized, and had provided an average of four well-baby visits
• 69% held a paid internship, and 23% were employed full-time
• 69% were using birth control
• 82% had a bank account

Our young mothers and their children are on track for healthy and productive lives.

The Continuum of Care model includes:

1. Parenting Support through Video (PSV): We use video to help build on positive interactions between parents and children. Video sessions are alternated with strength-based feedback to help young parents understand how their interactions with their children build attachment.
2. Home-Based Counseling: Counseling addresses parenting from a strength-based perspective and focuses on social/emotional competencies, creating a positive cultural identity, identifying family values and social connections, early intervention screenings, and managing stress and establishing positive coping mechanisms.
3. Workshops: Parenting groups are offered to young moms that focus on building knowledge of child development, appropriate discipline, self-awareness, attachment between parent and child, negotiating co-parenting relationships, and overall emotional/physical well-being of parent and child.
4. Teen Choice: Comprehensive sexuality education in a group setting.
5. IMPACT (Interventions to Maintain Parents and Children Together): The goal of IMPACT is to help birth parents get their children returned to them from foster care.