JulieAW

I have volunteered at our local crisis pregnancy center and our church is very involved in supporting/promoting the center. I was just wondering what innovative ideas other churches have used to encourage teen moms to keep coming to church. Many times, the grandparents will continue to come with the new grandchild while the teen mom stays home.

For some reason the Lord has put this on my heart and I was hoping that someone here would have some experience or resources they would be willing to direct me to. I am not a Parish nurse, but I am a school nurse with experience in OB nursing. I was wondering if anyone in Parish nursing has a ministry that helps teen mothers? Besides providing them with local resources, has anyone been able to effectively minister to young women in need? The church I attend does not have a parish nurse, but has several members of the congregation that are nurses. It seems that every year we have a couple of unwed mothers come to our church- I would love to find a way to minister them so they would continue to attend. If anyone has any suggestions or programs you can recommend, I would love to hear from you. Thanks, Julie

Great information - Thank you so much for the resources!

Martha Bergren, Thank you for asking this question! I have been working on changing the procedures at our school in regards to confidentiality of student information at many different levels. I am in a small school district in Illinois that has undergone restructuring in the past year. I am only at the school part time paid through a grant. At present, we have one form for all incidents/accidents. It serves as a communication tool that shows the parent was called and what action is going to be taken for the student (going home, back to class,etc.). The staff likes the communication of knowing that a student is leaving, but I feel that they do not need to know the assessment info. Unfortunately, the assessment is at the top of the page on these forms. I know there has to be a better way of doing this - probably a different set of forms. I have to say I am not the one who ordered these forms - I would have chosen a different format. I am sure if I found a different form(s) that works better the school would order them. At this point they are used to me telling them that things can not be done a certain way. I came into this position a year ago, so I am gradually whittling away how things "have always been done" and am very open to suggestions that would make things better. Please advise, ~Julie~ :)

We have similar procedures at the school I work at except our forms are in carbon triplicates - this may save you some time(?). The triplicate forms are the ones that have a checklist of what the problem is with space to elaborate and below has another checklist of treatment or what was done. A copy of this goes in the student's file, one to home, and one to the teacher. I document only names, class, and time of visit in the nurse log and use the individual forms as my documentation since they are kept in the student's individual health file. I find I have more time with this method since I am not documenting twice and it protects confidentiality of why the student came to the nurse's office on a particular day. We do have seperate accident report forms that the staff "witness" fills out. Since this is only filed with the office secretary, I usually do not even see it unless the witness gives it directly to me. I don't mind the telephone calls to parents - they are generally more than happy that someone cares enough to inform them of injuries. Sorry I don't have any other suggestions to save time. Good luck, ~Julie~