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Tuesday, February 26, 2002

By Barbara White Stack, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Some judges, lawyers, a few nonprofit groups and a church in Plum are trying to provide struggling mothers with mentors.

While, traditionally, it's been businessmen who have guided young protegees, and more recently, outstanding young people have served as role models for troubled youths, mentors for mothers is a new concept.

Successful mothers would mentor young women just out of jail, drug or alcohol rehabilitation programs, and homeless and women's shelters.

A fledgling program has operated out of Jubilee International Ministries in Plum since 1999. The Rev. Connie C. Brooks explained yesterday how that program started to Child Watch of Pittsburgh, an organization that works to improve conditions for the county's children.

Brooks said that some of the single mothers attending her church, particularly those who were living in or had just left shelters, didn't know the simplest things about caring for children, such as how to shampoo a baby's hair or what diaper rash looks like, so she began conducting Saturday meetings to help them out. Then she began matching volunteer mentors with the women. Now more than 50 mentors are helping women to become better mothers.

Common Pleas Judges Cheryl Allen and Kim Clark were among those Brooks recruited to speak to the women, and they, in turn, got Mark Edwards and Linda Ehrenreich of the Allegheny County Bar Foundation's Juvenile Court Project to work with the church to create a formal organization.

The Parental Stress Center in East Liberty is donating office space to the mothers' mentoring organization, and it is seeking grants of about $50,000 in seed money to establish the group formally.

Brooks also told the Child Watch members at the meeting yesterday in Calvary Episcopal Church in Shadyside that the group is looking for in-kind donations such as food, bus tickets and child care.

It will be seeking volunteers to serve on committees as well as to work as mentors. The mentors will receive training, Brooks said, and each will be asked to spend as long as six months with a mother.

The training is important, she said, because mentors won't provide counseling, and won't do drug or alcohol rehabilitation. They'll be more like aunties who will help the women learn to make macaroni and cheese instead of spending precious dollars on fast food, to secure affordable apartments or even to find the right ointment for diaper rash.

Edwards, whose project's lawyers represent impoverished parents in juvenile court, said the mentors could help prevent children from entering the child welfare system and could help those already in return to their mothers more quickly.

Brooks said once the group gets more established, it will broaden its scope to provide mentors to fathers as well.