BC Council for Families

October 20, 2009

Vancouver, BC – Anita Roberts, Executive Director of Safeteen, will deliver a keynote address at the 2009 BC Alliance for Young Parents Conference, to be held October 23-24 in Vancouver.  The conference, hosted by the BC Council for Families, will bring together educators, early childhood development experts, social workers, and youth and outreach workers involved with teen parents to discuss the most important issues facing BC’s struggling young parent families.

The two-day Alliance for Young Parents conference will feature:

•    Keynote Speaker: Anita Roberts, Safeteen Program
•    Panel presentation examining issues of working with Aboriginal Young Parents
•    14 leading speakers from the academic, government and non-profit communities

The theme of the 2009 conference is “Caring, Courage, Commitment.  Building Strength and Facing Challenge.”   The conference aims to inspire ongoing collaborations and the development of networks of practice among the isolated professionals who work with young parents in communities across BC, in order to further support and strengthen vulnerable teen parent families.

Background
There are more than 1400 reasons to care about teen parents.  

Every year in BC, more than 1400 babies are born to mothers less than 19 years old.  Without a high school diploma, these mothers and their children are doomed to a life of poverty and instability. Yet programs that assist teen parent families are few and far between in this province.  In BC today there are only 40 recognized young parent programs providing education, counseling, community referrals, and childcare for our province’s struggling teenagers and their children.

The BC Council for Famiiles, through the BC Alliance for Young Parents, brings the dedicated professionals who work with young parents together, to share their experiences and challenges, exchange ideas, learn from new research and develop best practices.

The BC Council for Families is a non-profit, non-governmental organization that is a leader in family life education, committed to strengthening families and family-serving professionals in BC. We provide research and resources on family issues, including our practical, affordably priced publications on diverse family topics. Our award-winning parenting programs include Nobody’s Perfect Parenting, My Tween and Me, and Parent-Child Mother Goose.

For further information:  Marilee Peters, marileep@bccf.ca (604) 660-0675.