Overview: Dr. Detona Maddox, a licensed nurse and clinical social worker, founded Purposely Chosen, a nonprofit organization that provides services and resources to pregnant foster girls in the Inland Empire. Through her organization, Dr. Maddox aims to fill in the gaps in care for pregnant foster youth, who are at significant risks of mental health challenges and homelessness. Purposely Chosen offers a home visiting and support program, health care and health education, baby showers, and maternity care homes for foster youth. Dr. Maddox’s own experiences as a homeless pregnant teen motivate her work, and she hopes to provide the stability and support that she lacked as a teen to other young mothers in need.
Breanna Reeves
Orphaned at a young age, Dr. Dretona Maddox is no stranger to the challenges life brings. She spent her adolescent life without parents and was homeless before entering the foster care system.
As a teen, Dr. Maddox became pregnant and was forced to make a tough decision in order to stay housed. It was decades later when she realized how big the gaps in care are for foster youth, especially pregnant foster youth.
Now, as a licensed nurse, licensed clinical social worker and founder of Purposely Chosen, Dr. Maddox is working to fill in the gaps that impacted her life as a teen.
According to a report commissioned by Mary’s Path, a Southern California-based short-term residential therapeutic program facility, approximately 1,000 foster youth in California are pregnant or parenting at any given time. The report noted that a lack of data makes it difficult to study the circumstances of pregnant youth, but did acknowledge that lack of services and presence in foster care place them at significant risks of mental health challenges and homelessness.
In 2006, Dr. Maddox started her nonprofit organization, Purposely Chosen, to provide services and resources to pregnant foster girls across the Inland Empire. Her organization supports pregnant foster youth with a home visiting and support program that helps them access health care and health education, as well as supporting them with baby showers.
“If I had all of these things, I would have kept my baby. If I had a me, I would have kept my baby. If I had a Purposely Chosen, I would have kept my baby,” Dr. Maddox said.
Just over twenty years ago, she wrote a proposal for a program that sought to host baby showers for pregnant teens who were homeless and in foster care. While her initial proposal wasn’t what the county needed, Dr. Maddox reworked her proposal to what is now the framework of Purposely Chosen, which provides maternity care homes for foster youth. The first maternity home was opened in 2014.
“I’m going to provide not only shelter, I’m going to provide all the services that they need. I’m going to provide mental health services for them. I’m going to give them stability, like all of the things that I would have needed to to be a good mom — a young mom, but a good mom. And so, I wrote that program from that perspective,” Dr. Maddox explained. “I tell people all the time, Purposely Chosen was built off of my pain.”
Though she lost her mom at a young age, Dr. Maddox remembers seeing her mom dress in her nurse uniform. Dr. Maddox always wanted to be a nurse, and importantly, always wanted to be in a profession that allowed her to help people. She eventually completed a unique program at USC which recruited nurses to earn their master’s degree in social work, and then went on to earn a doctorate of social work.
With over two decades of experience as a nurse, and more than a decade of experience as a licensed clinical social worker, Dr. Maddox is walking in her purpose.
Through referrals from the child welfare system, including the juvenile system, pregnant foster girls are placed with Purposely Chosen and remain in Dr. Maddox’s care for the duration of their pregnancy.
“I tell people all the time that our girls have no safe place to land,” Dr. Maddox said. She explained that pregnant teen girls are often excluded from equitable health care due to being young and pregnant. They are excluded from a typical education and are pushed toward continuation schools, and are mistreated at churches because they are pregnant and unmarried.
“People were not kind to them in the communities because they’re young and pregnant, and so they struggle a lot,” Dr. Maddox explained. “And so, they got so much coming at them at one time that we have created the teen parent community.”
Among Dr. Maddox’s staff, 90% of them were pregnant teens or parenting teens, so they have the understanding and empathy to work with these teens. At Purposely Chosen, pregnant youth are offered peer support, encouragement, mental health services to address their trauma, and a place to feel normal.
Even after the teens age out or transition, Dr. Maddox and her team still provide support through child care services, getting diaper and milk supplies, and even transportation when needed.
As a teen, Dr. Maddox recalls how long she struggled with the circumstances of her life as a homeless teen who experienced complex traumas and several barriers.
“As I think of Women’s History Month, and I think of all the contributions of women, I often think that I’m happy for the ones that, for lack of a better term, have made it, but my heart bleeds for the ones that don’t. There’s so many that are still struggling just to survive and can’t get a grip, or get past the trauma,” Dr. Maddox shared.
For a long time, Dr. Maddox didn’t tell her full story, of how she was a homeless, pregnant teen, who had to terminate her pregnancy, for fear of being shunned. Years later, as she pursued her nursing career and wanted to start helping pregnant youth, she realized that she had to tell her whole story in order to fully realize her purpose in how to help others.
“I just feel like God has a purpose for all of us. And, maybe just using my voice, or, as the Bible says, my tongue as a pen of a ready writer, meaning an epistle read of all men, that people can see, and maybe give somebody the level of motivation to say that, ‘if you did it, I can do it,’” Dr. Maddox said. “But that just means that I have to tell my story more and more and more and more and more so that more people can catch on.”