From today’s Telegraph:

Girls under 16 who become pregnant will be eligible for maternity pay under Government plans to outlaw age discrimination, legal experts said yesterday.

[...]”The motivation for introducing age discrimination legislation is to make it easier for people to carry on working beyond the time when they might have retired,” Mr Chamberlain said. ”It is, therefore, more than a little ironic that very young employees will be among its chief beneficiaries.”

So the young woman who delivers the Oxford Star local free paper on a Thursday will be eligible for maternity benefits, then, were she to get pregnant… Bully for her.

Okay, so I’ll eat my words. A tabloid has got hold of the story of a 13-year-old mum in Devon, but they’ve actually realised that their disapproval of her behaviour in getting pregnant is nothing to do with wishing her the best now she’s a mum. Cynically, I’d say it’s because her parents, who run a stables in Paignton, don’t sound like the majority of parents of teenage mums, and the young woman herself, who was still in school right up until giving birth, doesn’t sound like most young mums. But anyway - it’s a positive article, and best of luck to Charlotte Maddox and her family.

One of the reasons I support current government policy on teenage pregnancy is that, for the first time, they have a strategy and a targets both to prevent unwanted teenage conceptions and also to get teenage mums back into education, rather than just shaking their heads at them and letting them get on with it. Okay, so the target is an entirely unrealistic 60% participation rate by 2010 (current rate is about 36% - haven’t got the figure to hand). But with the support that this 13 year-old mother is bound to get under this Labour programme, maybe there’s a chance for a better future for her child and for herself. That is, if the Sun doesn’t put her on the front page under a screaming headline first.

(via Ken)

They’re continuing to fall, despite what the newspapers would have us believe.

Between 2003 and 2004, the under 18 conception rate fell by 1.4%. The total fall in teenage pregnancies between 1998 and 2004 is now 11.1%, and the total fall in conceptions for under 16s since 1998 is 15.2%.

Unlike ministers, I don’t believe that becoming a teenage mum makes you a failure, but reducing unwanted teenage conceptions is a really good thing, and I’m pleased that the strategy of increasing sex and relationships education, access to contraceptive services and advertising about safer sex are having an effect.

Update: The Telegraph misses the point entirely, hanging its entire doom and gloom piece on seven - SEVEN - more pregnancies amongst under 14s in 2004 than 2003.

The Oxford Mail is having a good day - there’s lots of bad news for my part of Oxford (they have a terrible website, so I can’t find the links):

“The number of teenagers using Oxford’s family planning service has slumped by nearly 50 per cent since it moved from Cowley Road to the city centre.”

So what is the PCT going to do? Close the satellite services on Barton and Rose Hill estates and replace them with school-based services. That’s great that they’re running school services, but when most young mums were not really attending school before they got pregnant, how’s that going to help tohose at most risk of teenage pregnancy?

And the school results are out, finally. The average percentage of young people getting 5 A*-C grades in England? 57.1%. In Oxfordshire LEA? 54.4%. In my local school, Peers, now in special measures? 20%.

In other teenage mums news, last week’s Guardian Backbencher email offered a prize for telling her

how much teenage parents will be paid each week to attend parenting classes under the Respect Action Plan (and if you like, what percentage of the standard 16- or 17-year-olds’ jobseekers’ allowance that represents).

Hold your fire, here’s the response in this week’s Backbencher:

Last week’s competition
Mike Cushman correctly pointed out that attending the government’s “Respect the Infant” parenting classes will qualify teenage parents for an additional GBP30 per week - unless, of course, they are already receiving some sort of educational maintenance allowance. On the other hand, he adds, their income support will be lopped by a fifth if they don’t turn up for a “learning-focused interview” with Connexions in Jobcentre Plus areas. And contrary to what the Backbencher suggested last week, under-18s are not usually eligible for the jobseekers’ allowance. Frankly, she wishes she hadn’t asked.

Glad she noticed her mistake. I would have entered the competition myself, but the last time I did I won the prize - a signed copy of The Devil’s Tune by Iain Duncan Smith. Rather puts one off entering. Anyway, I digress…

So what’s the answer to her question? Well, if you assume that she meant to say income support instead of JSA, then the percentage that the EMA of £30 per week represents is 88%. Worth going to those classes, kids - that £30 will be a 28% rise on your total take home - from £104.12 to £134.12. Lap of luxury.

I’ve been working and birthdaying for the past few days: meanwhile you’re all coming here to find out about George Galloway, and elsewhere in the world of blogs the usual suspects are chuntering on about the Respect action plan. Well, I’m disappointed that there’s no money earmarked for a youth club and youth workers in every neighbourhood in the country, starting with the estates where youth service cuts mean there’s bugger-all for kids (now where would those be? Surely not in Oxfordshire, where the Tories and Liberals ensure we have some of the lowest youth service spending in the country?), but the rest of it seems pretty okay.

One of the less-noticed parts of the Respect action plan was the section about teenage parents. As you all rely on me to be your source of all knowledge and frequent updates about teenage mums, I thought I’d better give this section a good going-over. The original document is here (PDF): the bit I’m referring to is page 19.

So, the section is headed “Focussing help on parents who most need it”, and to my surprise there is a section headed “ACTION: We will further incentivise teenage parents to attend parenting classes”.

Great, think I. There may be only 29,000 teenage mums in the country, but as usual they assume a profile out of all proportion to their and their children’s impact on antisocial behaviour and crime, and merit special measures in the plan to decrease those undesirable behaviours we’re always told about. I’m not encouraged.

Children born to teenage parents are particularly likely to experience a range of poor outcomes in later life, including low educational attainment. They are also more likely to become teenage parents themselves, helping to perpetuate problems across generations.

I won’t disagree with that really; though as usual, there is no new analysis here, just the same rehashed verbiage that we’ve seen in every document about teenage pregnancy produced by government since the SEU’s teenage pregnancy report, with its inconsistent evidence collection strategy and complete gender-blindness.

There is therefore a particularly strong case for taking action to improve the parenting skills of teenagers who become pregnant.

The children of teenage parents are likely to become teenage parents, so to stop them, we’d better make their parents into better parents because teenage pregnancy is caused by bad parenting? How interesting - so area and family deprivation, lack of aspiration, inadequate sex and relationships education and inaccessibility of contraceptive services don’t come into it?

Support for learning by teenage parents will be increasingly more accessible through Children’s Centres and other aspects of local children’s services.

But we know that teenage mums do worse in Sure Start areas (the forerunners of children’s centres), so how will you make sure that this doesn’t happen in the national roll-out? A good place to start thinking about it would be by going to a generic mixed-age antenatal class and watching how the teenage pregnant woman is treated by the professionals and the other expectant mothers, and then considering why it is that the vast majority of young mums don’t access the services they are entitled to.

But we will go further
We will make available Education Maintenance Allowances (EMAs) to teenage parents taking part in parenting classes if they are not already covered by EMAs.
We will ensure that the Activity Agreement Allowances being piloted from April 2006, (£60 million over two years) include teenage parents.
We will extend eligibility for the Care to Learn scheme, which contributes to childcare costs while young parents learn, to 19 year olds.

Unreservedly welcome these, though it’s not as if they are new announcements.

But then there’s the killer:

We will reinforce existing sanctions on Income Support (IS) for 16 and 17 year olds – 20% reduction in IS if they do not attend a learning focused interview with Connexions in Jobcentre Plus areas.

Many of the young mums I’ve met through work were struggling to meet even their very basic needs, such as having a healthy pregnancy, secure financial support and housing.

Just imagine. You’re a teenage mum, aged 16, and you’ve got a new baby to support. You get £104.12 in total from all sources to live on every week. (By the way, that’s £22.35 less than a mum in the same situation as you who’s 25, ‘cos clearly nappies cost 20% less if you buy them when you are 16 rather than 25.) Some letter comes from someone or another, saying you have to be at this building in town at 10.30am on Tuesday next week. You don’t have a car, money’s really tight and the bus is expensive; you may be on your own in a lone tenancy, and there’s no respite from the new baby. You’re more likely to have post-natal depression, and you’re unlikely to have eaten a healthy diet during pregnancy. Your friends are all being teenagers. And besides, the meeting says it’s about education: you probably haven’t been a regular attender at school for several years before you got pregnant. No wonder you miss the meeting. Bang goes £20.

Come on now. We all want young mums to go back to school or college, but it’s not like the money is being used for trips to Florida and the down payment on a jet ski.

Christmas greetings to all readers!

Mary was a teenage mum
She gave birth in a byre
‘Spite poverty and prejudice
Her babe was the Messiah!

(picture and doggerel courtesy of the lovely Jane Tomlinson, who understood and sympathised when I lost the argument to have “Mary was a teenage mum” corporate Christmas cards at work, and created this for me instead. Go buy her real art! I’d like to point out that we were talking about this before the Guardian women’s page got in on the act.)

So, dear readers, this is it for several days as Jo and I head off to spend quality time with my family. Happy Christmas!

Hi all (if there’s anyone left!), it’s been a while, hasn’t it? You’ll be glad to know that, five hours or so into my new job, I’ve yet to break the new boss’ favourite coffee cup.

Anyway, the Observer seems to think compulsory SRE is on the way (though the Mail irritatingly perpetuates the misconception that it’s all about telling 5 year-olds how to perform passable oral sex…) Hurrah! Except that the IAG on sexual health and the IAG on teenage pregnancy have recommended the same thing in every annual report for the last five or so years, so why this time it’s worthy of a front page, I don’t know. Maybe we’ve finally got some ministers who might understand why it would be a good thing…

Some things you have to read this weekend:

Gendergeek on the British public’s attitudes to rape laws. Puts me in mind of Jed Bartlet taking down Dr Jenna Jacobs…

Eric Lee with an insight into Israeli politics beyond security. (I know Jo linked to it first, but you really should read it - I was fascinated.)

In today’s Guardian Work section, there’s a diary of a teenage pregnancy worker - could be a week in the life of many of my field colleagues.

Less seriously, Tony has got the chaos that is Cornmarket St in Oxford on Saturday morning down in one. Having twenty minutes to kill today, I encountered all of the obstacles he notes, plus an Australian playing the bagpipes and a table of anti-abortion zealots. Oh, and, Tony, I shared your impulse to go and buy something from Vodafone just because the animal rights idiots were outside there; but on reflection I decided that a multi-national telecoms company probably didn’t need my solidarity. (!)

Update, Sunday morning: You could also go over to Natalie’s blog, Philobiblion, and enjoy this week’s Britblog roundup (on holiday from Tim’s), which to my surprise links to my post (rant?) about local government in Oxford.