Day Program

    The Florence Crittenton Day Program offers a comprehensive year-round alternative school and follow-up services for pregnant teenagers in Charleston County grades 6th through 12th.  This program is available for youth leaving their home school and attending on an outpatient basis.  The program's three major components include academics, medical (prenatal), and counseling and support services.  Individual, group, and family therapy along with Group therapy is provided on an ongoing basis.

    The Florence Crittenton Residential Program offers the only comprehensive program in South Carolina providing residential services to single, pregnant teenagers and young women.  Eligibility is nondiscriminatory as to age, race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability or financial status.  Length of stay varies depending on individual circumstances and needs or until delivery.

Additional Services include;

• Pre-admission screening and evaluation
• Individual, family and group counseling
• Case management assistance with post-partum planning, placement, and referral
• Prenatal care, hospitalization and post-partum care through MUSC
• Healthcare education including childbirth, childcare, & nutrition classes
• Academic instruction to prevent disruption of education due to unplanned pregnancy
• Recreational, cultural & educational activities within the Charleston area
• Spiritual life & chapel services
• Liaison with authorized adoption agencies when needed

    The Florence Crittenton Family Development Program provides comprehensive home-based supportive services to at-risk, single parent families with infants and young children.  The dual goals of the program are to promote self-sufficiency and independence for the parents and to achieve an environment for healthy child development.  Limited housing support (in Charleston County) is available for single mothers 18 years of age or older with one child.  Application for housing support is competitive and includes an interview with program staff.

Additional services include:

• Parent/Child development education
• Childcare planning
• Career counseling with emphasis on developing long-term career goals
• Health education
• Independent-living experience and instruction
• Individual counseling and referral to community resources
• Subsidized housing and transitional housing support

    Florence Crittenton's Community Education Program is offered throughout the state in schools, churches, and civic clubs.  The course content covered in our Community Education sessions operates on a "peer to peer" model.  The underlying assumption is that knowledge alone rarely changes behavior.  The sessions are geared toward increasing positive decision making skills and understanding the potentially negative consequences of early sexual involvement.  We seek to increase this aw3areness and the student's penchant to avoid unplanned pregnancy.  The peer-to-peer approach adds a reality based and interactive opportunity to connect on an emotional and knowledge based level around the difficulties of being a teen parent.

Our community Education peer-to-peer decision-making model requires young people to be future oriented, that is, to make choices among an array of alternatives regarding sexual behavior today with an understanding of the impact these choices will have on their future.  Learning to handle social and peer pressures is an important link to helping young people manage decisions around sexual behavior.  Having peers available to share their experience and answer questions, lends validity to the discussion led by the Community Educator.  Youth in their early teens do not respond well to lectures.  Therefore, our program is designed to involve them in thinking about, discussing, and practicing the use of information that will be helpful to them in resisting social and peer pressures to become sexually involved before they are ready.