The Comprehensive School-Age Parenting Program (CSAPP) is a school-based agency that promotes responsible behavior and healthy decision-making among Boston’s culturally and linguistically diverse youth. We serve to locate, counsel, guide and encourage middle and high school students who find themselves in difficult life situations to persevere and achieve educational objectives that will positively shape their future life choices. Our mission is to help youth become educated, productive adults and citizens who contribute to society. Our Masters level staff offers a year-round continuum of school-based services that help youth avoid teenage pregnancy and other risky behaviors, increase school retention and completion, create healthy families if youth do become pregnant while in school, promote a culture of high expectations, and support youth to overcome barriers that interfere with the development of stable families and healthy communities.

CSAPP has become a trusted resource for students, their parents, educators, collaborators, and funding sources.

Throughout the school year, all CSAPP clients enrolled in our Dropout Prevention programs receive one, some or all of the following services:

• Individual Counseling
• Group Counseling (Life Skills)
• Case Management
• Information & Referral
• Outreach
• Education

Boston’s educators and our other human service collaborators benefit greatly from CSAPP’s long experience serving Boston’s at-risk youth through Training and Consultation provided by our agency. CSAPP supervises Graduate Interns enrolled in Social Work, Education, and Policy programs in colleges and universities throughout the region.

Clients engaged in our Summertime Programming receive uninterrupted services throughout the year. Expectant and parenting teens focus is on parent-child bonding, parenting skills, higher education, employment and recreation. Middle school youth participate in Learning About the City – a summertime program offered to help youth become familiar with local museums, opportunities for healthy recreation, and prospective places of employment and higher education. During these field trips, youth are urged to talk about their school experiences, what they enjoy and what they find difficult; discover the resources and people that are available help them stay in school and complete their education; and to start to identify post high school employment, training and education opportunities.

Last summer students enrolled in the first year of a CSAPP sponsored English Language Arts course. Created in collaboration with Boston Public Schools, the Dudley Literacy Center of the Boston Public Library, and READBoston, the course included a self-designed curriculum, and a supportive academic environment in which our youth could thrive.