An annual conference which recognises the achievements of Bermuda's youth will not take place in February due to a lack of funds, The Royal Gazette has learned.

Teen Services, which organises the conference, has been strapped for cash ever since its Government grant was reduced from close to $500,000 to about $340,000.

As a result of this, chairman of the Teen Services board Opposition Sen.

Milton Scott last night revealed that the board was being forced to launch a major fundraising drive in January.

Mr. Scott attributed the decline in public support to the recent flood of major fund raisers for various other causes.

He also said issues dealing with teen pregnancy were not very popular.

However, he noted that the major theme of the "Blow the Whistle on Violence'' conference, held in February, was that Bermuda needed an agency which could provide a gamut of services for teens. And participants recommended expanding Teen Services.

"We were looking at providing a comprehensive set of services,'' Sen. Scott said.

Teen Services hoped to expand on providing social services, educational services, crises intervention, and psychiatric services in conjunction with the hospital and other Government agencies, he added.

"But we basically do not have the staff because of lack of funding.'' Sen. Scott also noted that Teen Services wanted to bring a "highly-qualified'' Bermudian nursing practitioner back from overseas to work with them.

But he said Teen Services could not afford to offer her an attractive salary.

Therefore, he said, the board planned to launch a major fund raising drive in January with the help of a professional Bermudian fund raiser.

"Sometimes you have to spend money to make money,'' he conceded. "We are in the real world and we have to compete with private forces.'' While a monetary figure has not yet been set, he said the board was expected to set a target amount prior to the launching of the campaign.

"We hope to achieve any funds that we can derive,'' Sen. Scott added.

Former Social Services Minister and head of Public Safety the Hon. Quinton Edness this week told The Royal Gazette that despite single-parenting being a major problem in Bermuda partially as a result of teen pregnancy, the community still was not doing enough to support Teen Services.

"This organisation hardly gets much from the public,'' Mr. Edness said.

"We've got to use the infrastructure that we've got to deal with teen pregnancy. Teen Services has built up their resources so that they can go into schools and talk to children.'' But Sen. Scott, a single-parent himself, denied that single-parented families were the Island's main problem.

"We are talking about deprivation rather than single parenting,'' he said, explaining that problems arose when children were physically and/or emotionally deprived, and sometimes genetically impaired.

"What we need to do is to develop early intervention programmes,'' Sen. Scott stressed. "We try to get to them (young women) before they get pregnant. But when they are pregnant, we monitor their pre-natal and post-natal care, and the bonding between mother and child.

"With every young lady that we work with there are two others working with her. We try to look at it from a multi-faceted approach.'' Teen Services also provided help to people who just "dropped in with a problem'' and also to people up to 25 years of age, he added.

"We feel that we are the agency that is to provide services that young people need, especially to those who leave school and have not been able to find a job,'' Sen. Scott said.

He also noted that Teen Services provided assistance to male and female teens who were not parents.

"We enter a contract to monitor them and also to teach them anger management in conjunction with school counsellors or clinic psychiatrists,'' he said.

"We try to work with whatever problems come our way.''