Five young parents and their children have been helped by the support and generosity of colleagues at igen.
Teenage Pregnancy Personal Adviser Pam Whittam turned to her colleagues at igen to help support some of the young people she is working with – a young mum who had been living in a hostel and was moving into a house with no household items for even the basics of cooking or sleeping; and a young couple who are expecting their first child who were living on only one Job Seekers payment and who could only just afford to eat and did not have any spare money for buying baby clothes.
Pam, who is part of the Connexions Targeted Support Team; asked her colleagues to donate any good quality and unused household or baby items that she could give to the young people she was working with. She received a wide range of donations from the staff at igen including plates, pots and pans and a wide range of baby items. The response to Pam’s plea for donations was so successful that she was able to support two other young mums’ with baby clothes that they could not have afforded.
When Pam gave the donated items to the young couple expecting their first child they said they were totally overwhelmed by the generosity of strangers and touched by the lovely baby clothes they had received. Pam has continued to work with the couple to look at extra sources of income including extra benefits and looking at future training and job opportunities for after the baby is born.
The young mum who is preparing to move out of a hostel said she was very grateful for the range of household items and felt confident she and her baby would soon be settled into their new home.The support provided by Pam has been invaluable to all the families she works with and she will continue to support them over the coming months.
Pam said “All the young parents were so grateful for the donations from igen employees. For me this is just part of my job – to find ways to support young people in need, but for the young people Connexions Leeds Targeted Support works with it makes such a difference to their lives. It is fantastic to see them grow and develop with the support we provide. These young parents, like so many others that we work with, didn’t know how they were going to cope and where to turn, but now they feel supported and are looking forward to the future. I will continue to support them over the coming months and support them when they are ready to progress to looking at training and jobs. They know there is always someone there to support them. Services like ours provide a valuable lifeline for so many young people in Leeds.”
Pam, along with her co-workers at Connexions Leeds Targeted Support, supports just over a thousand young people in Leeds every year. Young People are supported to identify and resolve their problems so that they can progress, develop and achieve their potential. Connexions Leeds Targeted Support provides services in every high school in Leeds and in a multitude of community venues across the City so that young people enter and sustain education, employment or training.
