The Hartcliffe & Withywood Teenage Parents Project was established in September 1991 when the Youth Service, NHS, St.Andrews Church and Mothers Union recognised that there was a gap in the provision. St. Andrew’s provided the venue and the Project secured funds through the Big Lottery allowing us to deliver sessions with the aim of engaging teen parents and their children.

In 1999 Deana Stone, a local youth worker for 16 years with Bristol City Council and former teen parent herself, took over as Manager of the Project. In order for the Project to continue it was essential for the teen mums to become more involved in the delivery and planning of the Project.

St.Andrews felt that it was time the Project became independent and in partnership with the Avon and Bristol Law Centre, group members took on the responsibility of organising the development of the Constitution and the Management Committee.

This piece of work was long and lengthy and took 3 years to co-ordinate, ensuring that the teen parents had a full understanding of the process and the legalities.

The Project held it’s first AGM and six young parents were voted on to the Management Committee, together with four local professionals, always allowing teenage parents to have the overall votes on any decision made. In 2002 the project developed a Peer Education Programme. The Manager and 3 members met in their homes to develop the work, leading to a project worker undertaking training to become the training officer for this new piece of work.

We expanded the project by giving back to the community delivering Peer Education within local schools, this attracted funding through Single Regeneration Budget and European funding in 2002 We tripled the staff ratio in 2003 and became a Charity and Limited Company. This led to Bristol City Council approaching the Project and offering us the chance to occupy the Community Centre in Gatehouse Way.

This allowed the Project to grow from strength to strength and helped us to support thousands of teenage parents and their children over the last decade.

A comprehensive referral system was set up allowing all local professionals to refer young parents to the project. As our services expanded the Project started to deliver training (In-house) followed by accredited courses through establishing partnerships. We developed further activities including residentials, summer programme, Home visits, Healthy eating, Child Protection, Health and Fitness, Special events, and drop in sessions; this continues to develop and is always set to the needs of the members.

In the last decade we have supported many teen parents of which at least 30% of them have come off benefits and securing employment, we think this achievement is fantastic.

Our crèche service is essential allowing parents to fully par ticipate. Children benefit immensely from our high standard of pre-school education, allowing a smooth transition to main stream Nursery. We identified a gap in crèche skills on the estate leading us to train 26 members as qualified crèche workers some of whom now work in our crèche.

We managed the rapid expansion in 2003-2007 we now have to manage the down size of the organisation. The members have become even more pro-active with in the project allowing us to continue to provide a quality service, whilst developing their own skills.