Almost Home was established by the Franciscan Sisters of Mary in 1993, with the mandate to serve mothers, ages 12 to 19, and their children with up to two years of housing, counseling, education and other support services. Fifteen years later, we are still fairly unique in the greater St. Louis area; only two other groups serve these vulnerable young families. Since opening, Almost Home has served over 1,500 mothers and their children.

Almost Home has three primary areas that we work on with our Members (homeless teenage mothers), in helping them to establish independence. These are:

1. establishing and achieving personal goals related to health care, emotional stability, educational enhancement and vocational readiness;
2. teaching appropriate parenting skills in an effort to create a lasting bond between members and their children, in order to significantly reduce or prevent the risk of child abuse/neglect; and
3. empowering members for independent living, including effective household management, budgeting, appropriate parenting skills and access to community resources.

Studies have shown that the longer these young women are in a program like Almost Home, the more likely they are to become self-sufficient and productive members of society, the less likely their children will be abused or neglected, and that the cycle of poverty and victim-hood can be broken. The teenage mother will feel more empowered by the knowledge and skills she has learned through our program. She will be more educated; will have learned effective household management and parenting skills, job skills training and financial / budgetary management skills; will have a higher self-esteem; and her stress level will significantly be reduced.

We provide each family with a “Continuum of Service” from Intake through Aftercare. These services include:

• transitional housing,
• case management,
• life skills (parenting skills, financial management, planning for future independent living, socialization and recreation),
• therapeutic counseling (individual, group, family and supportive counseling, motivational system),
• education (formal and vocational training),
• subsidized apartments,
• outside resource coordination, and
• aftercare services.

Our “Continuum of Services” emphasizes the empowering of the homeless teenage mothers who live here, for future success. We provide a safe, stable and structured environment were they can establish themselves and their own young family in healthy habits. We work with them and their extended families in order to improve their safety nets for the future. They learn basic life skills, including child care, health and hygiene, and household budgeting and management. They must commit to finishing their high-school level education, as well as attending life skills classes four nights each week. Counseling, both group and one-on-one, is also required.

This program depends on intensive, direct interaction between Program staff and Members. Our Case Managers assess individual needs and challenges, to match them up with needed resources. The Case Managers and Social Worker at Almost Home are in daily contact with the young mothers and children in our program. Our Case Managers and Social Workers help the Members with these issues, as well as less-immediate but longer-term needs (such as counseling, parenting or relationship problems, health and safety concerns, and education and career goals). In order to help them in the future, our Program staff teaches our Members how to be an appropriate tenant (household management, budgeting, relationship building, etc.) and then even once they move on, we provide ongoing case-management and support services. We also have 24-hour coverage by our House Parents, who handle all manner of crises with our residents and are often the first-line respondents.