London, UK, December 19th 2001.
Teenage Parents Service at the Stockwell YMCA charity in Lambeth, South London.
Sarah, 18 years old from Ghana, with her daughter Soraya, 7 months old. When she got pregnant she left the family and found accommodation at the YMCA Teenage Parents Service through the Local Council where she used to live.
The relationship with her family after that has changed: Sarah rarely speaks to her father and seldom meets with her mother.
Her partner Raphael, 23, and Soraya’s father, is a black musician. Sarah wants to study criminology.
The UK remains the country with the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe.
Lambeth is, together with Southwark, the area with the highest number of teenage mothers in London.
Over the past few years a range of new services supporting young people and young parents have been developed in Lambeth.