Family Advocate Program helps with the everyday stresses of
child-rearing
Gilroy – As an eighth-grader, Denise Castro gave birth to her first child – a girl she named Adriana. Now, at 22, she and her boyfriend have five children, ranging in age from 7 years to 7 months old.
Castro dropped out of school to have her baby but her boyfriend Max Rocha earned his diploma. He works sporadically in construction, while she stays at home with the children.
Luz Ponce’s twin daughters entered the world 11 months ago. Ponce and her boyfriend Juan Hernandez, both 18, are on track to graduate from Mt. Madonna High School in June and plan to attend Gavilan College this summer.
The two couples may be heading in different directions but their lives are both filled with the similar headaches of young parents.
That’s why they searched for a helping hand and found it in the Family Advocate Program, one of the programs offered through Community Solutions. The goal of the non-profit organization is quite basic: prevent child abuse by providing support and guidance to couples in need of that extra push.
Couples attend seminars, group dinners and attend outings with other families. Also, participants are sometimes the recipients of generous donations, receive guidance on how to pay bills and help with transportation and filling out job applications.
Another part of the voluntary program is home visits and families that sign up must commit to a minimum of two hours per week for as long as necessary.
“It’s helping to make their lives a little bit easier for that day,” said Family Advocate Program Coordinator Nancy Neyer-Kinoshita.
Enforcing that two hours a week stipulation isn’t difficult, at least for the aforementioned couples. All four look forward to their weekly visits from Luanne Martinez, program coordinator.
Dharma and Riley
Ponce spent her childhood straddled between Yuma, Ariz. and San Martin. Her mother worked in the fields and the family headed south for five months, then returned to San Martin in April.
All the moving prevented the 18-year-old from attending school steadily but that didn’t bar her from excelling. At Mt. Madonna she passed the California High School Exit Exam the first time around.
Principal Sergio Montenegro said Ponce is one of those students who defies the stereotype of screw-up continuation school students. But the teen mom had to put her education on hold again when she became pregnant at the age of 16.
She couldn’t go to school because she kept throwing up. Initially, Ponce planned on getting an abortion but then reconsidered.
She moved in with her father in Southern California and for a long time, no one knew about her pregnancy except her dad.
Ponce said she was particularly worried about telling her mother ” ’cause she would always say I was going to get pregnant ’cause I listen to rock music and she said it’s the devil’s music.” But her mother found out before the babies were born.
“I thought she would be mad but she just started crying,” she said.
To Ponce’s surprise, her mother has been completely supportive, visiting and dropping by necessities like boxes of diapers and baby clothes. Ponce moved back to Gilroy and Hernandez would come over and help out with the twins.
At first Ponce chose the names “Television and Internet” for her daughters but changed her mind, a good thing since Hernandez wasn’t too happy about the selection.
Instead she turned to her favorite T.V. shows for inspiration, dubbing the twins Dharma, from “Dharma and Greg,” and Riley, after a character on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Two months after the girls’ birth the couple reunited and later moved into their apartment.
Life with Five
When Castro leaves her home with her five young children in tow, she often attracts stares, inquiries and even rude remarks. People wonder if all the tots belong to her and sometimes make comments insinuating that the young mother must not respect her body.
Castro grew up in a Morgan Hill household of five siblings and an often-absent single mom. While her mother worked, she searched for the love and family element missing in her life.
In junior high school she discovered that lost piece in Rocha’s home.
“I just looked for that love and he gave me that attention that I needed,” she said.
That “attention” morphed into a pregnancy. The first thing Castro’s devoutly Christian mother told Rocha was that the family doesn’t believe in abortions so he better be ready to prepare for the child.
Castro did visit Planned Parenthood and went on birth control for a short time. But soon she was pregnant again.
“To this day I still don’t know how I have five kids,” Rocha said.
Rocha, 25, also had a haphazard childhood. His mother wasn’t around and his father spent his down time drinking, while his grandma and aunt filled the maternal role.
He started acting up and ended up kicked out of the Morgan Hill Unified School District. Rocha remembers the time he and his brother broke into an abandoned home and soon found themselves seated in the back seat of a police cruiser.
“I felt bad,” he said. “I started crying. They said they’d take us to juvenile hall but they let us go. That was a good lesson.”
He attended the community school in San Martin but returned to Live Oak High School and graduated. Rocha’s father quit drinking on his own and now serves as a caretaker of his many grandchildren.
In November, the couple heard about the Family Advocate program and decided to sign up. Rocha couldn’t find work in construction or painting because of the heavy rains.
Through the guidance of the program’s staffers, they’ve managed to find a bigger home to rent, purchase a van, learn how to budget and strengthened their partnership. The couple also obtained social services to help pay the bills but only plan to use the funds until they’re back on their feet.
Being independent and not relying on hand-outs is an attribute they picked up at Community Solutions.
“They just opened up a lot of doors for us,” Rocha said.
Family Advocate also helps couples identify their goals. For Castro that means earning her GED and for Rocha obtaining his contractor’s license and saving up for a home.
“Whenever you have a lot of kids you put those on the side,” Castro said. “They let you know there’s more out there.”
