Center Is an Open House in the Fullest Sense

Therapist Turns Her Home Into a Residential Haven for Pregnant Women, Girls

By all appearances, the ranch house in Manassas's Wellington neighborhood near the Jennie Dean Elementary School seems like a comfortable place for the upwardly mobile. There's a spacious back yard and trimmed hedges out front.

The home belongs to psychotherapist Jan Chambers and her family, but they decided to move out and convert it to a residential center for pregnant girls and young women with diagnosed mental health problems.

"We got this home and then said, 'Let us surrender this for this cause,' " said Chambers, whose family is renting elsewhere in the area. "We have forfeited our home. We are very excited."

The E. Carrington Family Enrichment Center, which officially opened last week, is unusual among state-licensed shelters for pregnant women in the Washington area, Chambers said. The residential facility, which is part of Chambers's private practice called the Calvary Counseling Center, serves girls as young as 12 who have a diagnosed mental health condition. Chambers prefers that its exact location not be revealed to protect the privacy of those who will live there.

Other shelters in the region for pregnant women or teens typically serve those who are 18 and older and focus on obtaining social services for them -- not aiding their psychological issues, Chambers said.

"I saw there was a major void in the service around pregnant teens," said Chambers, who was inspired to create the center because her mother gave birth as a teenager to her and her two siblings. "These girls are put out or ostracized, and [the area] is not equipped to adequately address the shelter and mental health and psychological needs of those girls."

The Carrington center, which is screening potential residents, will permit up to four women or girls who either are pregnant with their first child or have given birth to their first child. The average stay will be one to two years and will require weekly individual and group therapy sessions with Chambers or other counselors, to help cope with issues including declining self-esteem and trauma from sexual abuse.

With a staff of five employees including Chambers, the Carrington center, which is seeking nonprofit status, will rely on state and Medicaid funds. Officials with social service departments and similar agencies in Northern Virginia have toured the center or contacted Chambers about placing clients. The center's grand opening last month, she said, was attended by several Manassas council members and a state delegate.

Dixie Aiken, the facility's program manager, said she used to work as a teacher in the Manassas City school system, where she encountered several teenagers grappling with psychological issues linked to their pregnancies.

"You're worrying if you're fitting in and if you're wearing the right clothes and talking to the right people and, on top of all that, you're pregnant," Aiken said. "The mental stage that those young girls are in, they don't understand all the responsibilities and consequences."

In Northern Virginia, there were 2,264 teenage pregnancies in 2007, with 824 in Fairfax County and 640 in Prince William County, according to the state's health department.

In the more troubling and younger categories -- girls 15 and younger -- Prince William had 12 pregnancies and Fairfax had 10 in 2007. Among girls 15 to 17, Prince William had 189 and Fairfax had 215.

For those chosen to stay at Carrington, they will enter a physical space that feels like a modern home and healing center: hardwood floors, yellowish walls and an open kitchen that pours into a living room where, ringing the top of the walls, are the words "It is your right to be treated with dignity and respect, to be told about your treatment, to have a say in your treatment."

Hanging on a wall is a framed list of the center's daily activities, from 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. There also is a framed poem by Maya Angelou that Chambers received from her mother, Evalyne, who always went by "E."

Each bedroom has a single bed and a crib with brightly colored linens and features artwork hanging on the walls or painted on the ceiling. One bedroom will be occupied by a full-time house parent, who will help manage the home's daily rhythms as any parent might.

Chambers, who is often called to serve as a counselor in schools or companies during crises, said she has spent about $60,000 of her family's money to renovate the home. The biggest renovation was transforming their garage into a day care, whose walls have a commissioned mural of wildlife.

"It's about establishing a rapport. You have to do it in a creative way," Chambers said on a recent day, while touring the center with Prince William Sheriff Glendell Hill. "If you haven't done that, you're not going to get anything from them. You have to allow them to feel empowered."