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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Sparks of Hope for Preventing WV Teen Pregnancies

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Thursday, May 9, 2013   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - Very preliminary results from pilot projects in Parkersburg and Martinsburg suggest hope for reducing teen pregnancy.

Social worker Steve Tuck, chief executive of the Children's Home Society of West Virginia, said they imported a successful teen pregnancy prevention program from New York and started versions of it in the two West Virginia cities three years ago. It's too soon for any statistical results, he said, but some parents can see a difference.

He quoted a letter sent by one mother: "I watch so many great changes in my daughter. Her grade-point average is up an entire point. I love the fact that this will be available all the way through high school for her. Thank you - A grateful parent."

The programs offer different kinds of support for children, Tuck said - everything from academic help to job training, starting in the sixth grade and continuing through high school. Very little of it actually has to do with sex, he said, because the point is to help young people have the kind of goals that can help them want to avoid self-destructive behavior.

"See their future more hopefully," he said, "so that getting pregnant at the age of 14 or 15 is not something they want to aspire to, because they want to go to college."

Teen pregnancy has been falling nationally, but in some years has risen in West Virginia, especially in a few poor, rural areas. In New York, Tuck said, the program has resulted in teen pregnancy rates falling by as much as half. He said an associate who worked with the program there has told him she's seeing some of the same results.

"Even in these first two years," he said, "these sixth- and seventh-grade years, she can see from following these kids what they might call a path is so much clearer to them, for a successful future."

Preventing teen pregnancy is vital, Tuck said, because teens who become parents are much more likely to drop out, end up poor and be dependent on government programs. He added that the babies do worse.


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