Give them a break: How stigma impacts on younger mothers accessing early and supportive help in Australia

Younger mothers are categorised as an ‘at-risk’ group and targeted for early recognition and subsequent intervention to enhance children’s safety and well-being. However, younger mothers systematically endure stigma which can affect their willingness to engage with supportive services. This article reports on the findings from an Australian qualitative study of thirty-five interviews and two focus groups with younger mothers to explore their experiences of stigma and how this affects their engagement with services. We found that their interactions with services confirmed their feelings of being treated differently to other mothers. It led them to actively avoid supportive services because they had negative experiences or assumed that they would have a negative experience. This demonstrates the predictive power of stigma. Hearing from younger mothers about how these experiences play out in their lives and what they suggest would need to change for them to access services is critical for social workers and other practitioners to engage more effectively with this group of parents. We argue that the offer of early-intervention programmes may be more successful where there is capacity to establish a trusting relationship and where services convey an effective message to younger mothers that the special attention they receive at critical times is voluntary, normal and well deserved.