This report shares the findings from an impact and implementation study of New Heights, a DC Public Schools program that provides a multi-faceted approach for supporting parenting students’ educational attainment. This report demonstrates how the program made a significant impact on academic outcomes, such as school engagement and credit accumulation, and a marginal impact on a more distal outcome of graduation. The report provides an in-depth description of the program model, and presents student and staff perceptions of its success. (Author abstract)
This annual report for 2008-2009 describes the activities and outcomes of the Parents Too Soon (PTS) programs, intensive home visiting programs in Illinois that aim to maximize the abilities of teen parents to care for their children and continue their own development. All PTS programs provide long-term home visiting services (3 to 5 years) to teen parents and their young children using one of three nationally recognized research based models: Healthy Families America, Parents As Teachers, and Nurse Family Partnership model. In addition, 12 of the 22 programs receive supplemental funding to…
Recent interest in the subject of fatherhood notwithstanding, the problems of fathers, and in particular young fathers, have generally been overlooked in matters of public policy. In fact, the quality of political attention given young fathers has, if anything, grown somewhat negative in recent years, a trend evident in federal welfare reform legislation, which tends to cast young men as irresponsible losers or even sexual predators while resolutely demanding that they pay up. While such a negative approach might be justified in a minority of cases, in general it neither encourages healthy…
This report discusses the development, components, and evaluation of a home-based/group-based intervention program designed to increase the nurturing skills of teenage parents, treat the abusive parenting practices of teen parents, and prevent the initial occurrence of abusive parenting practices in teen mothers identified as high risk for physical and emotional maltreatment or neglect. The Nurturing Parenting Program for Teenage Parents and Their Families was validated by twelve agencies providing parent education to teenage parents throughout the country. A total of 178 teen parents (94%…
This paper explores the following four domains in which child welfare workers have to think strategically if work with young fathers is to succeed: within the agency, interagency, families and peers, and with young fathers who are chaotic and semi-chaotic. Strategies for consultation with young fathers are described, as well as strategies for identifying agencies for building partnerships. Tips are also provided for productive multi-agency working to support young dads, for ensuring funding and sustainability of programs, and for training to work with young dads.
Public policy asserts that paternity establishment is important for a child's emotional and financial well-being. Statutory and case law permit three mechanisms to establish paternity: marriage, legal voluntary paternity acknowledgement, and by lawsuit with genetic testing. Although the processes are relatively simple for adults, adolescent parents have several issues which complicate the legal establishment of paternity. These include maturity and the need for minors to have parental permission to marry, file a lawsuit, or sign a voluntary acknowledgement. Despite these concerns, it is…
Rates of births to teenage parents are high and there is also a high incidence of poor outcomes among the children of teenage parents including developmental and learning problems, and child maltreatment. Parenting programmes may have an important role to play in improving outcomes for both teenage parents and their children. The aim of this review was to examine the effectiveness of individual and/or group based parenting programmes in improving psychosocial and developmental outcomes in teenage mothers and their children. A range of biomedical and social science databases were searched.…
This final report discusses the Teen Parent Program, which provided a continuum of services to reduce child abuse and neglect and to strengthen the families of teenage parents. The project addressed a number of problems teen parents face: weak family structure and support; low levels of self-sufficiency and self-esteem; and lack of family planning, medical care, information on parenting, and parent-child interaction. The program consisted of 4 basic components. These components were: a family care specialist, teaching child development and home management, and providing transportation and in-…
This report discusses the Teen Age Parent Program (TAPP), a school-based program for teen parents, which began in December 1986 and continued through December 1988 in 2 school districts in Wisconsin. In both districts, TAPP involved 4 components: support groups for teen mothers; support groups for teen fathers; support groups for extended family members; and volunteer parent aides. The program served 100 teen mothers, 42 teen fathers, and 60 extended family members in the 2 districts. Both school districts chose to allocate money from their regular budgets to continue the program…
This final report presents the major activities and accomplishments, problems, significant findings, and dissemination activities of Project Takoja. The goal of the project was to develop a replicable, comprehensive Native American adolescent parent model that increased adolescent parent self-sufficiency and ability to parent. During the project, a community assessment instrument was developed to identify existing levels of services provided to and used by Indian adolescent parents and potential resources to provide services to these parents. Training packages were developed that were…
