A presentation given by TIHR Principal Researcher / Consultant Judy Corlyon to a group of staff and post-graduate students at the University of Greenwich on 25th April 2012.
The current and previous governments have been exercised by the high number of teenage conceptions in England and Wales which, despite the investment of resources through a 10-year Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, have failed to come down to the level of other countries in Western Europe. Meanwhile, the young women who do become teenage parents (about half of those who become pregnant) have received comparatively little attention.
Young mothers frequently, though not always, come from families where deprivation is transmitted between generations, producing a cycle of poverty – a phenomenon identified many years ago which the current coalition government has re-discovered and aims to end through its Child Poverty Strategy. In the meantime teenage parents will find themselves even more disadvantaged by cuts to the statutory services and financial support previously in place.