<h1>Record city toll of young mothers</h1><div>Published Date: 18 April 2006 </div><div class="ds-firstpara" id="ds-firstpara">Teenage pregnancies on rise despite drive</div><div class="va-bodytext" id="va-bodytext">Emma Dunlop TEENAGE pregnancy rates have risen to record levels in Sheffield, despite the city being seven years into a 10-year project to slash the number of conceptions, latest figures show. In 1999 the Government set strict targets for Sheffield to halve its teenage pregnancy rates by 2010. This followed revelations that Sheffield had one of the highest rates in the country. But new figures show the city is no where near meeting this target – and pregnancy rates area going up rather than down. There are now more babies born to mothers under the age of 18 than before the city's teenage pregnancy strategy was launched. This is in stark contrast to other Yorkshire towns and cities, where the conception rates among girls under the age of 18 is dramatically reducing. In 1998 there were 50.5 conceptions per 1,000 under-18-year-olds in Sheffield. In the most up-to-date figures released so far, this figure had risen to 54.4 by 2004. The 2005 figures will not be out until 2007. By comparison, across North Yorkshire, excluding York, between 1998 and 2004 there has been a 30 per cent reduction in the rate of under-18 conceptions. However, despite this adverse situation, health chiefs in Sheffield last night insisted they would still meet the Government target. The the director for HIV and sexual health in Sheffield, Steve Slack, said: "I am not going to be drawn on saying whether I am disappointed or not. "All I can say is that I would not be talking right now if I wasn't pretty confident that we will still meet the targets set by the Government. "We have a number of initiatives in place and about to be put in place which we hope will help us reach those targets. We know we have a hard task ahead, but we do believe we can still achieve it. It is a tight target but I am convinced we are going to meet it." Among other things, Mr Slack is hoping a newly appointed "boys worker" will help reduce the figures. "Teenage pregnancy has always been deemed to be a girl's problem," he said. "But we are looking at working with all young men on sexual health issues including teenage pregnancy. This is an area that has not been looked at before." Other initiatives being trialled in Sheffield, which Mr Slack believes will help reduce the number of conceptions, include a pioneering peer support service, where young people advise and guide each other, as opposed to adults lecturing youngsters. Also recently launched is the new parent-to-parent service, where parents tell others how to speak to their children about sex. Mr Slack hopes too that by all agencies working together the conception rates will drop. South Yorkshire as a whole was singled out by the Government after it was shown to have one of the worst rates of teenage pregnancy in Britain. In the last few years there have been several high-profile cases which have caused controversy. In one case an 11-year-old girl gave birth on the bathroom floor of her South Yorkshire home without realising she was pregnant. A 24-year-old Sheffield man who fathered her baby was jailed for seven years in May 200 for under-age sex. He had also made the girl's mother pregnant and just a few weeks after her daughter gave birth, she too had his baby. Two years later this same girl was in the headlines again after she gave birth to her second child – still aged only 14. emma.dunlop@ypn.co.uk<!--- MPUMinCharsCutOff:210 PageLength:3397 MPUPositionFromStart:250 MPUPositionRange:1000 hasVideoOrImage:False ---> </div>