Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Teenage pregnancy rates may be declining in the United States and in Oregon, but they are not in Sweet Home and other East Linn County communities, those who work with young mothers say.
Though official number from government agencies generally take two or three years to be announced, it’s clear to those who deal with teenage pregnancy that it’s on the rise in Sweet Home and other local communities.
“When we hear those (national and state) statistics, we just laugh,” said Sonia Hintze, maternity care coordinator at Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital. “We know it’s not true here.”
Hintze is responsible for shepherding mothers who intend to deliver at the Lebanon hospital through their pregnancies and helping them connect with the services they need to deliver and care for their babies.
She says she has seen a lot of teenagers pregnant in East Linn County — Sweet Home, Cascadia, Lebanon and Brownsville.
“It’s a very major problem,” she said.
Hintze, who has been in her current position for four years, said that until recently she was seeing “no more than 10” deliveries by girls 17 or younger at the hospital. “This year it looks like it could be 36.” Six of them, she said, are junior high-aged girls.
“The biggest percentage of the very young are in Sweet Home,” said Hintze, who recently joined the board of the Sweet Home Pregnancy Care Center, an organization that helps mothers in need.
Hintze said the young mothers she sees are often girls who are homeless.
“Some move every two or three days,” she said. “Some are second- or third-generation homeless. They don’t know what it means to say ‘this is where I’m going, where I’ll be back.’ When we put them into a mentoring home they can’t handle it.”
Hintze also said that 17 of the 36 girls she has seen this year are using drugs — mostly methamphetamine — or alcohol.
She said that School District 55 is doing “a good job” with the limited resources it has to keep pregnant girls at Sweet Home High School, but she said she has seen more dropouts in recent years..
Joan Pappin, the district’s health services project director, runs a small program to try to address pregnant students’ needs, but the time she can spend with students is limited.
Hintze suggested a number of steps, some echoed by Pappin, that could be taken to reduce the problem of pregnant teens in East Linn County.
– Begin substance abuse and prevention education in sixth grade, and continue it through junior high and high school. Also, incorporate the Students Today Aren’t Ready for Sex (STARS) program into the curriculum, as Lebanon has done.
– Create a mentoring program, beginning in sixth grade, targeted at youngsters who are homeless or in drug-affected homes. Mentors should be inside schools as well as outside the schools.
– Institute a life skills training program for the same age group.
– Provide support groups for teens attempting to kick alcohol or drug habits in the schools. “When they’re trying to recover and are getting back into school, they don’t get lot of support there,” Hintze said. “It makes it harder to recover, easier to relapse.”
– Create free after-school activities for youth in the Sweet Home area and during summer and breaks. Hintze said that in Lebanon, for example, youngsters can take advantage of free or cheap opportunties at the town’s skating rink and at the bowling alley.
“Not all kids can go to the Boys and Girls Club,” she said. She said that such activities are particularly important during breaks.
“Summer and school breaks are particularly problematic,” she said. “We have slow times and really busy times. The busy times are after spring break, after the prom, toward the end of the summer and right after Christmas break.”