Zaideh's House: A Home for Teen Mothers

*WARNING* very long entry.

i will be breaking it up, however, if you care about the topics of child abuse and/or teen pregnancy, and have information or background, I would welcome your input as this is a work in progress.

So in my vision of progressive living there is a lot in the world I would love to change. Picking a path means letting go of others. So what is the most important project I want to take on? For me it is the cause of children. This business plan will come into fruition within 2 years. I see it as only a first step, but we shall see.

This is my business plan for my non-profit organization, called Zaideh's House. It is a business plan for a group home for teen mothers and their children. This was also my final project for my Business class. My instructor loved it and told me I should do this for my "capstone" project for my senior year. I guess we have to actually complete a social project to graduate.

Vision Statement:

We are working to break the cycle of abuse by providing abused children with the opportunities and tools necessary to restore value and quality to their lives.

Our goal is to work effectively with local and state governments to provide a therapeutic living environment designed to enhance esteem and achievement and ultimately to minimize the lasting effects of past abuse on children.

Mission Statement:

Our mission is to help teen mothers who have survived abuse to become healthy and effective women, as well as parents. In addition to providing them with food, clothing and shelter, we will incorporate carefully guided therapy designed to eliminate the patterns of abuse in their own parenting behavior.

Long Term Goal:

We will conduct research on the prevalence of various “special needs” kids in the system. We will collect statistical data on various populations within the court dependency system, such as: How many are “gifted and talented,” developmentally delayed, have a terminal disease, are mentally ill, have ADD/ADHD, etc. We may have to come up with our own tools to measure these things and to identify these qualities.

It is vital to this project that each home targets a specific need. It is impossible to adequately nurture each individual child when they are grouped with an array of needs. It is when a teen mom and her baby share a home with a drug addict, a schizophrenic, and an autistic child that the potential for growth is squelched.

We will also research cost effectiveness. We can see how much many we will save the state by minimizing juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, inpatient psychiatric hospitalization, substance abuse treatment, etc.

• Brand:

Our organization will be called “Zaideh’s House.” We will tell the story of the name on our brochures and in our literature. “Zaideh” is a Yiddish word for grandfather. My daughter’s Zaideh passed away when she was 8 months old. “Day-dah,” was her first word, even before mommy or daddy.

He made a point to keep his home warm and welcoming to his children and grandchildren. In fact, he was my husband’s stepfather. He himself was adopted, and he took on my husband and his sister as his own children. He never had his own biological children. My nephew, who was 3 when he passed, and my daughter were the joys of his life. “Zaideh’s House” will be dedicated to fostering unconditional love for the children who live there.

Long Term Projections:

My ultimate goal is to build a prototype, and then replicate it. I hope to eventually reform the entire CA state dependency system. This project will provide the evidence that will suggest that the current system is flawed and is actually contributing to the problem of child abuse and child dependency on the courts.

So our next challenge is to prove to our donors, and to the state of CA that we have a successful model for therapeutic group homes, and that the current system is not working.

Opportunites:

We have a unique opportunity to first break the cycle of abuse for the children of our teen mothers. That means there will be at least 6 children who will be spared from a life of detachment and abuse, abandonment or neglect. Our teen mothers will be given the opportunity to build for themselves a life of security, independence and overall health and wellbeing. They will be spared the negative effects of losing custody of a child, and will be allowed to have pride as women and mothers.

We have an opportunity to change the way the world sees and responds to abused children, and teen mothers. We have an opportunity to discover and share a workable effective therapeutic model that will teach abused children how to “re-parent” themselves, and become healthy parents. We have an opportunity to equip the state with the tools necessary to effectively parent it’s own children, her dependents.

Threats:

Most abused children do not have any insight into their problems whatsoever. Reality for them has been distorted. Most teen mothers feel inadequate and overwhelmed by the challenges that motherhood brings.

Abused children tend to be very closed to anyone who offers help. They tend to see rules as impositions, and crave individual freedom. In essence, the fact that a teen mother is being forced to take on and deal with the responsibilities of motherhood creates an anxiety and potential resentment of her child, which would increase the likelihood of her abusing her own child.

Some young people, girls especially, see having a child as the greatest reward and at the same time the greatest obstacle to personal freedom. Our job is to teach these young mothers to prioritize, and to build their self-esteem, as well as gain a support system

Overall Goals:

Our ultimate goal is to facilitate a healthy transition from adolescence into adulthood for teens who have suffered from abuse, abandonment or neglect. This is an ultimate goal, and our current enterprise is only one piece of that effort. For the current project our goal is to do this for our teen mothers.

The next part of our current project’s goal is to enrich the lives and environment of care for the infants and children of our teen residents.

This project is working on two goals with two different objectives that cannot be met independent of each other. In order to be healthy mothers, the teens have to be healthy young women. In order for the infants and children to thrive, they must be provided not only with physical needs, but also with proper attachment and bonding with their healthy parent.