Sen. Gomez Secures Funding for Young Parents in Budget Debate

SPRINGFIELD — State Sen. Adam Gomez announced that he successfully advocated for the inclusion of an initiative in the FY 2025 state budget that is crucial to the well-being of young parents in his district, securing $250,000 for Roca Springfield to provide services targeted at young parents in the city who are experiencing acute trauma, multiple systems involvement, mental-health concerns, domestic violence, or abuse.

The funding directed to the organization will aid in providing parenting and life skills, housing stability, and self-sufficiency training while building cognitive and behavioral skills through intensive case management and wrap-around supports. Gomez, serving in his second term in the Legislature, has successfully fought for this initiative in each of the previous budget cycles he has been a part of.

“Far too often, we hear stories from young mothers in our state experiencing abuse and forced to provide everything for themselves and their children. There is no one-size-fits all approach to offering those families the stabilizing support that they need, and it is important to supply them with a host of wrap-around services that offer individualized case management and trauma-informed support,” Gomez said. “I am proud to fight for this initiative each year to ensure that those individuals have the time and opportunity to heal and ultimately break the cycles of poverty and violence.”

Roca’s Young Mothers program intensively engages a population of high-risk young mothers (ages 16-24) with very young children, defining high-risk young mothers as those who have high levels of trauma, are disengaged from school and work, are living with extreme poverty and instability, are involved with multiple systems, and are impacted by violence (domestic violence, community violence, etc.).

These young mothers require intensive case management, trauma-informed supports (including sustained behavioral health), help accessing and meeting basic needs, and advocacy across multiple systems and are therefore unable to participate or succeed in traditionally designed parenting, education, or job-training programs. They require sustained intervention of at least 18 to 24 months to allow for behavior change, healing from trauma, and finding safety and stability.

Between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, Roca worked with 300 young women and young mothers across Massachusetts. An increasing number of young women are victims of sexual violence and victims and perpetrators of gun and street violence. They show up in the healthcare, criminal-justice, and child-welfare systems and are at risk of permanent separation from their children, incarceration, injury, or losing their lives. Specifically:

• 85% have significant trauma, 38% are victims of trafficking, 88% are victims of domestic violence or abuse, and 82% have mental-health concerns, including high depression and PTSD, and only 33% are accessing clinical mental-health services;

• 32% are on probation, of which 82% are experiencing intimate-partner violence (IPV), 54% are victims of trafficking, and 50% have open cases with the Department of Children & Families (DCF); and

• 37% have open cases with DCF, of which 80% are experiencing IPV, 28% have children in DCF custody, 23% have open criminal cases, and 16% are homeless.

Since FY 2020, Roca has received limited funding through the Dual Generation Supports for High-risk Young Parents line item and has relied on earmarks to serve high-risk young mothers in Springfield, where there is significant need.