The Corner Clinic Teen Parent Programme serves
teenage parents, predominantly teenage mothers,
medically, socially and psychologically, who come
to primary care for perinatal health visits during
pregnancy and after the birth of their baby. Using
standard screening tools and clinical interviews
tapping into problems and psychosocial risk, we
aim for the early detection of teenage mothers’
mental illness with the goal of initiating early
multimodal intervention. It seems crucial to reconstitute
mental well-being in the teenage mother and
to decrease the psychosocial risk, while at the same
time educating about safe and sensitive parenting.
All these measures, in turn, reduce the likelihood of
dysfunctional parenting and promote that children
are raised in safe, nurturing and stimulating environments,
leading to securely attached, healthy
and adapted children. To achieve this goal, we
provide, in addition to comprehensive screening
of the teenage parent for mental, physical and social
healthcare needs, a sophisticated set of screenings
for the child to detect early socio-emotional and
developmental challenges needing attention. The
Corner Clinic Teen Parent Programme is a multimodal,
multicollaborative effort and incorporates
individualised care (primary care/obstetric/midwifery
care, psychiatric care, individual counselling or
therapy, paediatric care) and group support (a
psycho-educational parenting and self-care skills
curriculum delivered in group-format, the Mom
Power parenting group). The Mom Power (MP) group
is delivered either at the primary care site or a
community based location (e.g. a church). In the
context of the MP group setting, children have the
opportunity to undergo a developmental screen
assessing developmental delays in speech/language,
and in psychosocial, motor and emotional regulation