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)
The purpose of this guide is to provide a comprehensive set of resources for jurisdictions interested in addressing the needs of pregnant and parenting youth in foster care.The guide is organized into three major program categories: 1) Parenting Supports; 2) Developmental Supports for Children and Parents, including Health Care and Trauma-Informed Supports; and 3) Preparation for Adulthood, including Education and Housing. Evidence of effectiveness is listed in each of the program descriptions, which includes rating information from Evidence-Based Clearinghouses or any other information of…
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…
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.…
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 program evaluation assessed the effectiveness of the Young Men as Fathers (YMAF) program administered by the California Youth Authority. The program offers parenting education to 15 to 20 wards of the state living in four institutions to help them become more involved in their families, prevent child abuse and neglect, and provide greater emotional and financial support to their children. Data for the evaluation was collected for 822 program participants from July 1993 through December 1995 and for a comparison group of 847 wards in two non-participating institutions. While the…
In 1991, P/PV designed the Young Unwed Fathers Pilot Project to see if young, economically disadvantaged fathers would enter a program that provided job training, education, counseling and parenting services for up to 18 months, and if participation would lead to an increased capacity to support their children, both financially and developmentally. This report presents a detailed look at selected aspects of the lives of the young fathers before and during program participation, including their attitudes and relationships with the mothers of their children. It also evaluates employment and…
This final report summarizes the results of an NCCAN-funded project designed to reduce child abuse and neglect among families with adolescent parents. The project consisted of group parenting education programs; peer supports; in-home intensive services when needed; and educational and support services for fathers. An evaluation of the program found that long-term, open-ended group intervention was more effective than a 12-week didactic group model. Recommendations include using a naturalistic evaluation instrument to assess the impact of the program on parent-child interactions and targeting…
