EN
In the article the necessity of social support for underage mothers is revealed. The causes of early motherhood include: the processes of acceleration; the liberalization of attitudes in society; effects on behavior of youth media; stability of gender stereotypes; sexual, physical and mental abuse; dysfunctional relationships of adolescents with parents; negative effect of individual education programmes and the lack of an effective system of structural prevention. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the theoretical and methodological foundations of social support for adolescent mothers and justification of the opportunities for its optimization. It is revealed that social support for adolescent mothers is a work aimed at the implementation of social care, assistance and patronage of adolescent mothers to overcome difficulties in life, preserve, enhance her social status.Social support is aimed at finding ways out of a problem situation, to help activate reserves of a young mother. It is determined that the social support of adolescent mothers is characterized by indicators: a systematic approach, phasing, dynamics and flexibility, variability, performance. In the implementation of social support of teenage mothers, it is advisable to use methods such as: socio-economic, institutional, educational, psychological and sociological. It is established that the socio-pedagogical support, as a type of social support focuses on the process of transferring the social experience taking into account characteristics and needs of different categories, the result of which is the inclusion in all social systems, structures, societies, and communications intended for healthy people, as well as active participation in major areas of life and activities of the company in accordance with age and gender, preparing them for a meaningful adult life, the most complete self-realization and disclosure as a person.It is proved that the complex activities in providing various types of assistance for adolescent mothers and their children will help solve the problem of social adaptation of this category of the population. Criterion of the effectiveness of social support is the transformation of underage mothers from providing customer support in client-social service and social prevention.It is revealed that to optimize social support by adolescent mothers: improvement of normative-legal base of social support; improvement of the content of social support for teenage mothers and training of qualified personnel for the implementation of this type of social work.