Mary's Path

Core Programs: Housing, Mental Health Therapy, and Supportive Services

Residents are provided safe housing and supportive services. Using a case management model, Mary’s Path provides a comprehensive and compassionate continuum of trauma-informed programs and services to up to 40 pregnant and parenting teens and their babies with a safe place to call home. *Trauma-Informed Therapy facilitates healing from the impact of abuse, abandonment, and violence. Mary’s Path provides therapy services and counseling on site to develop customized treatment plans in response to the scope of trauma experienced by the teens. Resulting trauma includes depression and anxiety. In recent years, due to the escalating incidence of CSEC activity, there has been a significant increase in higher acuity diagnoses, such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, feelings of extreme guilt, substance use disorder, and bipolar disorder. Treatment may include one-on-one counseling, group therapy sessions, and alternative therapies such as equine, art, poetry, and yoga. *Parenting Skills Coaching uses an evidence-based curriculum comprised of weekly prenatal and parenting classes. A Child Development Coordinator provides information on child development as well as teaches the teens practical skills such as feeding an infant, soothing a crying baby, and installing a car seat. Soft skills development is also part of the curriculum, including building healthy relationships, communications, active listening, and becoming a nurturing person. Both individual coaching and mentoring and group workshops are provided to maximize participation by each teen mom. *Life Skills Mentoring allows residents to learn how to live in a family environment and begin to build/rebuild a support system via connections with their friends, family (as appropriate), and community members. In addition to workshops, residents further develop life skills including work and study habits, how to be a good roommate, budgeting, goal-setting, and resumé writing. *Academic Support and Job Readiness help to ensure high school completion, continuation to college (if desired), workplace skills, and exploration of potential career paths. Attending school is required for every teen while living at Mary’s Path. In partnership with Orange County ACCESS (Alternative, Community, and Correctional Education Schools and Services), Mary’s Path operates Mary’s Academy, an on-site year-round high school; teen moms may opt to attend Foothill High School in Tustin, CA instead of attending Mary’s Academy. For teen moms who want to continue to a post-secondary school, Mary’s Path will coordinate a tour, enrollment and orientation at Santa Ana Community College or a local four-year university. On-site child care ensures that children of teen moms are cared for while they are at school. *Access to Medical and Dental Care facilitates optimal physical health. Mary’s Path’s Medical Coordinator assesses the medical and dental needs of each teen within 30 days of their placement at Mary’s Path and facilitates linkages to providers in the community. Most, if not all, of these teens have never had regular medical and dental care and do not have a medical home. *Aftercare Services helps facilitate successful transitions to independent living. More information regarding Aftercare is provided in the next section. The budget figure provided below reflects the total organizational budget, inclusive of all programs and services. Public contracts cover roughly 80% of all expenses, with private fundraising needed to fund the balance.

Aftercare Services

Every teen mom who comes to Mary’s Path has been a victim of abuse and neglect, and nearly every one of them has been subject to even more horrendous abuse as a survivor of CSEC. While at Mary’s Path, they become both mentally and physically healthier, continue their education and prepare for joining the workforce, and learn critical life skills, including how to become good mothers. When they exit Mary’s Path, their traumas from abuse and neglect do not go away. Aftercare helps to sustain the healthier behaviors and ensure that these young moms become happy and healthy, equipped with parenting and life skills, and linked to community resources so that they can successfully transition to independent living, and most critically, resist the temptation to return to the sex trade as an “easy way out.” Case Managers work with every teen mom, including those with a planned exit. Individualized plans are created to address basic needs as noted above, as well as explore transitional housing options and coordinate linkages to public benefits, such as Cal-Fresh, CalWORKS, WIC, and Medi-Cal, and as may be needed, to community resources such as tattoo removal services or subsidized child care. They also help with obtaining any required documents such as birth certificates for their babies, social security cards, and driver’s licenses or state identification cards. Navigating all these options in a fragmented and siloed system of social services is daunting and requires trauma-informed case management to ensure that these teen moms access the resources and support they need, including continued mental health therapy that is both trauma-informed and healing centered. Specialized services are critical. Despite federal and state regulations that require support and services to help facilitate a successful transition once a teen mom has left a residential setting, what exists are standard services that do not have the specific expertise required to support these teen moms, such as evidence-based therapeutic offerings that include Child Parent Psychotherapy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, and Alternatives for Families – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. These modalities require specialized skills and certifications in maternal mental health, domestic violence, child sexual exploitation, and trauma-informed care. The lack of specialization increases the risk of housing instability as well as potential re-exploitation by the commercial child sex trade. Additionally, continuity of care and the security of a trusted relationship with Mary’s Path help to facilitate each of these teen moms’ increased likelihood to remain stable in their housing and continue their journey to greater self-sufficiency. In fact, a recent survey of Mary’s Path’s Aftercare participants revealed that 61% were unwilling to continue mental health services with a different provider following their exit from Mary’s Path. Mary’s Path also seeks to increase the capacity of its Aftercare Program to include a Case Manager who is specifically tasked with locating and providing services to teen moms that have become disconnected from Mary’s Path due to loss of housing or other circumstance. These teen moms may be living on the streets or in shelters, and “street outreach” is needed to reach these young moms. Using knowledge of trafficking “hubs”, locations of shelters, and leveraging relationships with community partners, for example, the Case Manager will meet and serve the teen moms where they are, including providing direct mental health services and other support, and warm linkages to other providers as needed, whether that be in a shelter, in a coffee shop, in a motel, or literally on the streets. All Counties have halted funding of Aftercare services due to budget cuts, making funding support of Aftercare services totally reliant on private funding.

Professional Development

To provide the highest quality programs and services that will facilitate positive outcomes for the teen moms who call Mary's Path home, Mary’s Path seeks to ensure a rigorous curriculum of professional development and training for its staff with a focus on best practices in trauma-informed care and support. Trauma-informed care and support is based on recognizing and understanding the impact of trauma on the survivor’s physical, psychological, and emotional well-being. Annually, all Mary’s Path staff are required to complete 40 hours of professional development and training to comply with STRTP regulations. These costs are covered by Mary’s Path’s public contracts. Twenty (20) hours can be completed in-house with content created and delivered by senior staff and consultants with approval from Community Care Licensing, California Department of Social Services (CCL). The remaining 20 hours must be completed externally by vendors approved by CCL. As mentioned previously, in recent years, Mary’s Path has seen a significant uptick in high acuity mental health needs, including but not limited to eating disorders, Substance Use Disorder (SUD), and PTSD, primarily due to the increase in CSEC victimization, requiring additional staff training to ensure that both residential and mental health staff are equipped to meet the complex trauma that each teen mom is experiencing. Mary’s Path has embarked on an ambitious multi-year initiative to provide trauma-informed care training to all staff across the organization to ensure continuity and consistency of care and service delivery. The overall goal is to ensure a greater understanding of trauma along with an organization-wide buy-in for a trauma-informed approach. Additionally, Mary’s Path seeks to develop a Train the Trainers curriculum and other processes that help to sustain a systemic trauma-informed framework. In additional to trauma-informed care, professional training topics include behavioral management approaches, social-emotional development, recognizing SUD, “When Survivors Give Birth”, safety, civil rights, sexual and reproductive health, diversity and inclusion, and best and promising practices for working with CSEC survivors. Mary’s Path has also needed to bring trainers on site to provide professional development to all staff at one time rather than sending a small group off-site as training workshops become available. Training that addresses working with CSEC survivors, or diversity and inclusion, as examples, is needed for all staff. The costs for these more advanced training and professional development opportunities are not covered by contracts. The budget below represents incremental costs for the specialized training and professional development. Mary’s Path’s total professional training budget is roughly $250,000.

Child Development Program

Mary’s Path provides on-site child care for the babies and young children of its teen moms while they are in school or work, and when they have health or therapy appointments. Staff are versed in best practices in child development and early childhood education to ensure a strong start for each child. A growing body of research has shown that young children may be impacted by trauma from events that threaten their safety or the safety of the parents/caregivers (National Childhood Traumatic Stress Network https://www.nctsn.org/what-is-child-trauma/trauma-types/early-childhood-trauma). Because babies and young children are not able to verbalize their reactions to threatening events, many often assume that young age protects these children from trauma. Recognizing the impact of trauma on very young children, in late 2024, Mary’s Path restructured its Child Development Program to fall within Mental Health Services to ensure clinical supervision, appropriate trauma-informed care, and any needed interventions for every baby and every teen mom who calls Mary’s Path home. Interventions may include focusing on relationship-based approaches, centering on healing, and supporting the child-mother relationship. Modalities used by Mary’s Path include Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT). In addition to at least 20 hours of care per week in a developmentally appropriate and nurturing environment for each baby, every teen mom is provided with opportunities to learn about child development, strategies to facilitate optimal development, and parenting skills, all delivered within a trauma-informed framework. Presently, the Child Development Program is staffed by one Child Development Coordinator, who has trained Mary’s Path’s residential staff to provide direct child care on a rotating basis as needed. Using the evidence-based Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ), the Coordinator also ensures that babies are assessed quarterly and works with each teen mom to monitor developmental milestones. A baseline assessment is created and screenings repeated quarterly. Results are shared with each teen mom. Activities are suggested and goals are set to facilitate positive developmental outcomes for each baby. Outside referrals are made as needed to the Regional Center and other resources. Mary’s Path seeks to increase the capacity of this program with the addition of a Child Development Specialist. This Specialist will provide direct child care services, ensuring greater continuity and consistency while supplementing the care provided by rotating residential staff. The addition of this position will also allow for greater capacity to provide both individual coaching/mentoring and group education and parenting skills development workshops on a more frequent basis. Due to the complex nature of each teen mom’s needs, as well as the needs of each baby, specialized services are critical. While other subsidized child care providers serve young children in the County, these providers are not well-versed in the complex needs of these teen moms and the impact of trauma on their babies. These other programs also lack the flexibility in care hours that Mary’s Path on-site Child Development Program provides, along with the extent of both individual and group parenting education and skills training delivered by staff who have training in trauma-informed care and expertise in mental health services. The Child Development Program is also coordinated with the Parenting Skills Coaching described in Program 1, Core Services: Housing, Mental Health Therapy, and Supportive Services, to ensure that the teen moms build parenting skills that are aligned with the care that their babies are receiving through the Child Development and Child Care Program. The below budget represents program costs that are not covered by contracts of a total budget of about $320,000.