COAL TOWNSHIP - A grant has been secured to establish a group home in Coal Township for troubled young mothers.
Ellen Withrow, grants and development coordinator for Central Susquehanna Intermediate Unit, said they learned in mid-March of the group's impending receipt of a five-year, $900,000 grant from the federal Administration for Children and Families.
It will be used to operate Pinnacle Place in the 1600 block of West Lynn Street, where four pregnant women age 18 to 22 could live with their newborns as long as 21 months while receiving motherhood counseling and career training on site.
A tentative state date is Sept. 1, she said.
It had previously been reported that the application was rejected in February. It had not. When the first round of grant recipients from the federal agency was announced, CSIU was not among them. Their proposal had ranked high enough, however, that it was among recipients when additional funding was awarded.
CSIU is partnering with Central Susquehanna Opportunities toward opening Pinnacle Place, utilizing a property purchased in a county tax sale by the latter. Coal Township commissioners voted in October to modify a zoning ordinance to allow such a home despite opposition among many residents in the west end neighborhood.
The program is open to anyone in the CSIU's service area: Northumberland, Montour, Union, Snyder and Columbia counties.
Young mothers accepted into the program are homeless, either in the traditional sense or that their pregnancy had helped exacerbate already existing issues at their family home, forcing them to find a more stable situation.
"This is sort of a refuge in some ways," Withrow said.
Four full-time employees are expected to work at the home, including a "house mother" who would live on site. There also would be five part-time employees.
Mother's accepted into the home would be taught skills in parenting, budgeting, child development and job training. All of this will be done, according to CSIU's Kim Eroh, family education manager, "so they are able to get into the community and be self-sufficient."
Withrow said the number of births to mothers without high school degrees in the CSIU service area is significantly higher than the 15.8 percent statewide average. In Northumberland County, she said the figure tops 20 percent.
Except for in Montour County, childhood abuse and re-abuse rates are also "significantly higher," she said.
"We're trying to provide a stable environment for the young women to learn how to nurture and provide development activities for their young kids," Withrow said.
CSO had previously identified the grant sought for the home as a Project ELECT grant. Withrow said that was not the case, and CSIU's application to that program was unrelated to the Pinnacle Place project.