Skip to main content

Teen Moms

I hope everyone had a great Holiday and a Happy New Year! I sure did. Now I'm back to work helping the Outreach department get prepared for another year filled with adoptions and happy families!

Yesterday while I was waiting for my computer to load a video from the Today show popped up and caught my attention. It is a video describing a school in Memphis, Tennessee that has 90 pregnany teens. The reporter goes on to say that one out of every five girls at the school has either had a baby or is pregnant. It couldn't but make me wonder how many of those girls, who are 16 and 17 years old, had ever considered adoption. For many girls that age it is difficult and near impossible to attend school while raising a child.

Unfortunately, Gladney does not have a current caseworker working in Tennessee that could help the school by educating their students on adoption. But, check out the video for yourself!

Comments

  1. I live in Tennessee. What materials do you have that I could give to school officials about adoption?

    ReplyDelete
  2. That would be wonderful! If you would like I can mail you some packets about adoption awareness. Send me an email at grace.hughston@gladney.org I would be more than happy to send you more information about Gladney.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's not Business, It's Personal

Well, it is the beginning of my second full week here at Gladney as an intern, and it has been wonderful! I think that my favorite part about being here, besides the free cake that randomly shows up in the break room, is the people that are here. I have felt continually supported by each person I come in contact with. Each time I ask a question, or look lost, I am anwered with a smiling face and a helpful attitude! So, thank you Gladney staff! :) As I am typing this, I am overhearing a conversation with a caseworker and one of their clients, and the caseworker is getting to tell the family that they will be able to travel to visit a child in the next month! On the phone the mother started crying at the thought of, possibly , seeing their new baby in a month...and then I started crying as I recognized how special and personal this work is. What is done here touches lives, not only the families lives, but the staff's (and intern's) as well! That family will be changed from today ...

Training at Gladney

Lately I have been working on getting together a training for the staff of Gladney and some of our partnering agencies (through the DFW Interagency Adoption Council). We have been working with The Parenting Center to set up the training for February 25. As we were looking through the list of trainings that The Parenting Center offered one stuck out to us, in particular. This was titled, "Helping Children Deal with Stress and Feelings," and we felt that this training would be beneficial for most of the social workers that would be in attendance. The training is all about recognizing and responding appropriately to the positive and negative feelings of the children of today and the stresses they face. In particular, learning this information would be helpful to pass along to the families and children they work with on a day to day basis. I was especially intrigued by this title because it is not one that is taught on very frequently, yet is crucial to parents understanding the...

Social Media, Bookmarks

Today I kind of played catchup, but in the process I encountered some interesting projects that Gladney is working on. First, I signed Gladney up for Gowalla.com and Foursquare.com . If you do not know anything about these websites (as I was) they essentially are forums for you to visit locales in your city and give tips or reviews of them. It is really interesting and they are utilized mainly though mobile devices, a medium that is growing faster than the Internet did in the early 90s. So, if you love your iPhone apps, download the Gowalla and Foursquare apps and go visit the Visitor's Center and the Gladney Center for Adoption! Now moving in a different direction, I also began working on a project to turn artwork made for Gladney's book covers into bookmarks. These bookmarks would be left at various outreach events at schools, etc. The current artwork is a really unique piece of grafitti that was made especially with Gladney in mind. It is made up of words that embody Gl...