DOCUMENT RESUME ED 431 857 Stephens, S. A.; Wolf, Wendy C ... · DOCUMENT RESUME. ED 431 857 UD 033 023. AUTHOR Stephens, S. A.; Wolf, Wendy C.; Batten, Susan T. TITLE Improving Outcomes

DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 431 857 UD 033 023

AUTHOR Stephens, S. A.; Wolf, Wendy C.; Batten, Susan T.TITLE Improving Outcomes for Teen Parents and Their Young Children

by Strengthening School-Based Programs. Challenges,Solutions, and Policy Implications.

INSTITUTION Center for Assessment and Policy Development, Bala Cynwyd,PA.

SPONS AGENCY Foundation for Child Development, New York, NY.; JesseStuart Foundation, Ashland, KY.; William and Flora HewlettFoundation, Palo Alto, CA.; Kellogg Foundation, BattleCreek, MI.; California Wellness Foundation.; Mott (C.S.)Foundation, Flint, MI.

PUB DATE 1999-04-00NOTE 34p.; Funding also provided by the Vira I. Heinz Foundation.PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141)EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS *Adolescents; Delivery Systems; *Early Parenthood; High

Schools; *Outcomes of Education; Preschool Children;Preschool Education; Program Effectiveness

IDENTIFIERS *School Based Services; *Temporary Assistance for NeedyFamilies

ABSTRACTThis policy paper addresses how to strengthen school-based

efforts for adolescent parents and their children so that they can be moreeffective in meeting the needs and improving the outcomes of these youngfamilies. Based on the experience and lessons of a 6-year effort, theInitiative to Strengthen School-Based Programs for Adolescent Parents andTheir Young Children, this document addresses several specific challengesfaced by school-based programs. Policy implications are discussed toaccomplish these objectives: (1) making teen parents and their childrenvisible; (2) helping the education system work for teen parents and theirchildren; (3) providing critical services and supports to teen parents andtheir children; (4) linking schools with Temporary Assistance to NeedyFamilies (TANF) services and resources; and (5) providing services to allteen parents, both non-TANF and TANF. The experience of the initiativesupports the need for a broader, community-based strategy to create acoordinated plan and build a comprehensive system for teen parents and theirchildren. (SLD)

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Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be madefrom the original document.

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CENTER FOR ASSESSMENT AND POLICY DEVELOPMENT

CAPDIMPROVING OUTCOMES FOR TEEN PARENTS

AND THEIR YOUNG CHILDREN BY STRENGTHENING

SCHOOL-BASED PROGRAMS

Challenges, Solutions and Policy Implications

S. A. STEPHENSWENDY C. WOLF

SUSAN T. BATTEN

CONTENTS

SUMMARY OF POLICY IMPLICATIONS

I. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

II. INTRODUCTION

III. MAKING TEEN PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN VISIBLE

IV. HELPING THE EDUCATION SYSTEM WORK FOR TEEN PARENTSAND THEIR CHILDREN

IV. PROVIDING CRITICAL SERVICES AND SUPPORTS TO TEEN PARENTSAND THEIR CHILDREN

VI. LINKING SCHOOLS WITH TANF SERVICES AND RESOURCES

VII. PROVIDING SERVICES TO ALL TEEN PARENTS, BOTH NON-TANF AND TANF

VIII. CREATING A COORDINATED PLAN AND COMPREHENSIVE SYSTEM FORTEEN PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN

PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE ANDDISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS

BEEN GRANTED BY

-SeA11 ZaTCCA-P3)

TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)

1

2

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONOffice of Educational Research and improvement

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION

CENTER (ERIC)AThis document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or organization

originating it.

O Minor changes have been made to

improve reproduction quality.

Points of view or opinions stated in thisdocument do not necessarily representofficial OERI position or policy.

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Copyright April 1999 by Center for Assessment and Policy Development. All rights reserved.


SUMMARY OF POLICY IMPLICATIONS

This policy paper addresses how to strengthenschool-based efforts for adolescent parents and theirchildren so that they can be more effective in meetingthe needs and improving outcomes of these youngfamilies. Based on the experience and lessons of asix-year effort the Initiative to Strengthen School-Based Programs for Adolescent Parents and TheirYoung Children funded by several national founda-tions/ and administered by the Center for Assessmentand Policy Development (CAPD), this documentaddresses several specific challenges faced by school-based programs. These challenges include:

Making teen parents and their children visible;

Helping the education system work for teen parentsand their children;

Providing critical services and supports to teen par-ents and their children;

Linking schools with TANF services and resources;and

Providing services to all teen parents, both non-TANF and TANF.

While this paper highlights innovative solutions tothese challenges from the field, the major focus is onidentifying policy changes at the community, stateand federal levels and those appropriate to privatefunders that would allow programmatic solutionsto be more broadly implemented. Pulling togetherthese policy implications across each of the challengeareas reveals a rich array of possibilities that wouldstrengthen school-based programs for adolescent par-ents and their children. These implications are sum-marized below.

SUMMARY OF POLICY IMPLICATIONS TOSTRENGTHEN SCHOOL-BASED PROGRAMSFOR ADOLESCENT PARENTS AND THEIRCHILDREN

Making teen parents and their children visible

TANF, schools, health and social service agenciesshould regularly calculate rough estimates of teenparents and their children in planning service deliv-ery sites and approaches, including outreach.

Other funding programs should require estimates ofthe numbers of teen parents and their children andthe priority that will be given to teen parents andthe children of teen parents in applications and pro-gram plans.

Requirements for identifying and ensuring adequatesupport for minor parents should be enacted intolaw and resources provided for carrying outassigned agency responsibilities.

There should be centralized responsibility for teenparents within schools.

The public, school staff and other provider agenciesshould be made more familiar with the rights ofparenting adolescents to educational opportunitiesthrough public schools under Title IX and the avail-ability of subsidized child care available throughTANF and other sources to support school atten-dance.

1 Phase I of this work was funded by The Foundation for Child Development, The Stuart Foundations, The William andFlora Hewlett Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and the California Wellness Foundation. Phase II was fundedby the Foundation for Child Development, The Vira I. Heinz Endowment and The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.


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Summary of Policy Implications (continued)

Helping the education system work for teen par-ents and their children

The protections that Title IX affords pregnant andparenting students should be broadly promoted asa matter of district policy to students, parents, com-munity members, school staff, administrators andschool board members.

School districts should seek to balance resourcesand priorities between enhanced services for ado-lescent parents within comprehensive high schoolsand stand-alone alternatives.

Districts should commit core school district fundsfor the development and implementation of alterna-tive instruction methodologies and other innovativeeducational approaches for at-risk students withinmainstream schools.

Replication packages and other information on alter-native instructional methodologies and other educa-tional interventions appropriate for at-risk studentsshould be made available so that local school dis-tricts have access to information on new strategiesfor at-risk students.

Districts should balance the goal of high schoolgraduation for teen parents with realistic assess-ment of both student educational needs and statusand community options for GED completion.

TANF resources should be used to build the capaci-ty of schools to address the needs of parenting stu-dents as well as support an array of educationaloptions for teen parents in the broader community.Options could include but not be limited to commu-nity colleges and other community-based educa-tional programs.

Centralized responsibility for teen parents withinschool districts should extend to the young childrenof teen parents, and link with the district's efforts inthe area of early childhood development and schoolreadiness.

Providing critical services and supports to teenparents and their children

Community service providers especially thosecharged with supporting early child developmentneed to consider schools as an important potentialsite for delivering services to, or at least reaching,parenting teens and their children.

Public and private funding of community provideragencies, including early childhood serviceproviders, should include requirements to imple-ment strategies that link with school-based pro-grams for teen parents and their children.

Flexible funding streams should be developed (simi-lar to those in California and Florida) that can payfor comprehensive coordinated case managementservices for all parenting students and their chil-dren, regardless of eligibility for public assistance orother means-tested benefits.

Funding and technical assistance should be provid-ed to support the development of a community sys-tem for case management, including standards ofpractice and accountability systems.

Additional support for the dissemination of informa-tion and staff training on effective practices in work-ing with teen parents and their children should bepart of public and private funders' agenda in theareas of family strengthening, economic self-suffi-ciency and early child development.

Linking schools with TANF services and resources

Plans for the implementation of TANF shouldaddress the special needs and circumstances of par-enting teen recipients.

Local TANF agencies and school districts shoulddevelop joint procedures for identifying parentingteen TANF recipients and referring them to appro-priate educational programs.


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11. Introduction (continued)

In addition, school-based case management thatincludes attention to the health and development ofthe teen's child and parenting education that helpsyoung parents support their children's physical,emotional, social, language and cognitive develop-ment can also contribute to young children's schoolreadiness and early school success.

Thus, school-based programs and school-linked serv-ices represent a particularly valuable, and feasible,opportunity to improve outcomes for both parentingadolescents and their young children.

The implementation of welfare reform and its require-ments for adolescent parents who are receivingTemporary Assistance To Needy Families (TANF) ben-efits also offers opportunities to make a difference forthese young families through school-based programs.Teen parents under the age of 18 on TANF arerequired, except in special circumstances, to beenrolled in educational programs. Local schools arethus a valuable resource for helping current TANFrecipients meet these requirements and school enroll-ment, attendance and performance are now a concernof local and state welfare agencies. Further, servicesand supports to parenting teens while in school arelikely to be an important component of effective wel-fare prevention efforts. Thus, schools and local wel-fare agencies have the opportunity to partner togetherand better meet the needs and improve the lifechances of teen parents, and in the long run, of theirchildren. To take advantage of this opportunity, how-ever, communities need to strengthen all their institu-tions that potentially touch teen parents, including butnot only schools, to meet a number of significant chal-lenges.

There is tremendous potential for school-based pro-grams to meet the needs and improve outcomes forboth adolescent parents and their children, and thereare many small scale and innovative school-based

programs around the country. In addition, the rela-tively small number of parenting teens and the chil-dren of parenting teens in most communities offersopportunities. Their small numbers can make servingteen parents and their children and helping them getoff to a good start in life seem, and be, more feasible.And, in fact, there are usually a number of agencies,programs and services in many communities thatalready provide services to adolescent parents andtheir children and could be parents with school-basedprograms.

However, in many communities school-based pro-grams for adolescent parents and their children facemany barriers and do not reach their full potential.They are unable to reach and serve anywhere near thenumbers of teens and their children who could bene-fit. Nor do they offer an array of educational, healthand social services and supports that research andbest practice suggests are needed to have the greatersuccess for teens and their children. Further, sustain-ing commitment to these programs during times ofbudget reductions and other crises faced by manyschool districts is often difficult, even at the same timethat welfare reform has increased demands onschools to serve teen parents.

THE INITIATIVE TO STRENGTHEN SCHOOL-BASED PROGRAMS FOR ADOLESCENTPARENTS AND THEIR YOUNG CHILDREN

Over the last six years, with the generous support ofseven foundations,5 the Center for Assessment andPolicy Development has worked to clarify the issuesand challenges facing school-based programs for ado-lescent parents and their children, and to identify andin some cases develop strategies to address theseissues and challenges. The goals of this work havebeen to help school-based programs:

5 The first phase of our work was funded by the Foundation for Child Development, The WK. Kellogg Foundation, theStuart Foundations, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the California Wellness Foundation. The secondphase of this work was generously funded by the Vira. I Heinz Foundations, The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation andthe Foundation for Child Development.

© Copyright April 1999 by Center for Assessment and Policy Development. All rights reserved.


II. Introduction (continued)

Expand their efforts to reach and serve more teenparents and their children;

Improve the quality, equity and effectiveness of theeducational opportunities available to teen parents;

Build connections with other community agenciesand providers so that teen parents can receive thenecessary support services to stay in and success-fully complete school; and

Ensure that the young children of teen parents haveaccess to preventive health services and develop-mentally appropriate child care.

Phase I of the Initiative was national in scope, identify-ing major barriers and challenges to implementingschool-based programs for teen parents and their chil-dren and documenting innovative local approaches tomeeting these challenges. The major product of thisphase was a report that has been broadly disseminat-ed and widely used in the field.6

Phase II of the work has been carried out in partner-ship with the school-based programs for adolescentparents in three communities: Minneapolis,Minnesota; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Portland,Oregon.7 Beginning in January 1996, these programshave been provided with grant funds, technical assis-tance, opportunities for cross-site exchange, and inter-mediary support. These supports have allowed theseprograms to:

Expand their outreach efforts and enroll additionalteen parents in school-based programs;

Provide training for school-based advocates andchild care staff, as well as staff in other agenciesand programs, to improve service quality;

Strengthen individual assessment and case man-agement strategies;

Build stronger referral networks with community-based agencies linking teen parents and their chil-dren with a range of services;

Put in place technical capacity to collect and analyzedata on teen parent and child characteristics, schoolenrollment and attendance, use of other services,and educational and development outcomes;

Increase community awareness of the numbers ofteen parents and their children and the need to pro-vide them with services and supports; and

Leverage additional public and private resources tosupport school-based teen parent programs.

From our earlier national review and the past threeyears' work with these three communities, CAPD hasgleaned insight into challenges confronting and solu-tions available to communities that want to make useof school-based or linked services and supports toimprove outcomes for adolescent parents and theirchildren. Many of the challenges are easily identifiedand many community- or program-specific strategiesto address these challenges exist that could be adopt-ed more broadly. However, development of a com-prehensive, sustainable effort at a scale sufficient toensure that all teen parents and their children benefitis hampered by a lack of a coherent set of local, stateand federal policies.

ISSUES ADDRESSED IN THIS DOCUMENT

In this document, we organize our lessons learnedabout challenges, solutions from the field, and policyimplications around the following essential tasks ofeffective school-based programs for adolescent par-ents and their children:

How to bring attention to the numbers and needs ofteen parents and their children so that communityresources and services can be appropriatelyfocused;

6 See School-Based Programs for Adolescent Parents and Their Young Children: Overcoming Barriers and Challengesto Implementing Comprehensive School-Based Services. CAPD, Bala Cynwyd, PA, 1994.

7 In Minneapolis, Barbara Kyle, Sara Mullett and the TPP coordinators; in Pittsburgh, Kathy Short, Jan Ripper and SallyMole; and in Portland, Oregon, Mary Karter, Jo Bronson, Jerene Merritt and the TPS staff.



II. Introduction (continued)

How to help schools provide more effective educa-tional services to parenting students;

How to ensure that these young families bothteen parents and their children have access to arange of other services and supports;

How to link school-based programs with welfarereform policies affecting teen parents; and

How to harness community resources so that allteen parents in school-based programs whetheror not they are eligible for TANF can be served.

At the end of this document, we reiterate our beliefthat, as a nation, we will not be able to make best useof the energy and resources that are now directedtoward benefitting teen parents and their childrenuntil we are willing and able to create a comprehen-sive strategy and coordinated set of policies for theseyoung families.


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III. MAKING TEEN PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN VISIBLE

While adolescent parents and their children are ahighly vulnerable population, they are not highly visi-ble within most public systems. In most communities,the total number of parenting teens or of the youngchildren of teen parents is not known, and their spe-cial needs and special opportunities are not the sub-ject of community or agency plans or strategies. Ofcourse, at the same time, this "invisibility" in the allo-cation of public resources and services does notextend to the political arena, where births to unmar-ried teens are often cited as one example of the decayof family values in our society and thus of the needfor changes in policies in a number of areas to reduceadolescent sexual activity.

However, the fact that parenting adolescents and theirchildren are not identified as the target for interven-tion in many service systems is a significant issue tobe tackled in strengthening school-based, as well ascommunity-based, intervention efforts. This sectionelaborates on some of the challenges associated withthe invisibility of parenting teens and highlights someprogrammatic solutions we have seen in our work. Itends with several policy recommendations that couldhelp programs and communities address these chal-lenges.

THE CHALLENGES OF "INVISIBILITY" FORADOLESCENT PARENTS AND THEIRCHILDREN

Teen parents and their children are served by manydifferent systems. These young parents often are orhave been in public school. They may be a memberof a household receiving public assistance benefits.They may use public health or nutrition services pre-natally or for their children. They or their children

may be enrolled with a medical assistance insurer orprovider. They may receive counseling or social workservices or case management because of involvementwith the child welfare system. Thus, teen parents areoften found within the larger client or target popula-tion of many agencies, but generally not identified oridentifiable as a separate group.8

These challenges are just as evident for teen parentsin schools. Given their relatively small numbers,andthe fact that student record systems generally do notidentify (for good reasons) parenting students, teenparents can get lost within the general student popu-lation. This tendency may be reinforced by site-basedmanagement and decentralized budgeting. Individualschools may have identified only a few such studentswithin their population and no school may haveresponsibility for identifying and tracking studentswho may drop out or move around frequently due toissues related to pregnancy or parenting. Teen parentshave no natural advocate within the school-leveladministration, and this is even more true of theyoung children of parenting students since the focusof the building staff is on students at the junior andhigh school level, not on school readiness for upcom-ing cohorts of primary grade students.

This invisibility in systems that provide teen parentsand their children with services means that their spe-cial circumstances and needs and the specialopportunities and challenges in serving them arenot recognized. These factors are likely to limit theeffectiveness of interventions.

Teen parents may be offered an interventiondesigned for adult clients that does not addresstheir unique developmental issues.

8 For example, schools are often reluctant to indicate on their records a student's status as a parent, as it represents astigmatizing characteristic. In public assistance and child welfare systems, teen parents and their children may beembedded within larger households and not identified separately when reporting case statistics.


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III. Making Teen Parents and Their Children Visible le (continued)

The additional challenges of attending and doingwell in school while taking on the responsibilities ofparenting may not be considered by the educationalsystem.

The dynamics of three-generation households maynot be taken into account in providing parentingeducation or other supports.

Opportunities to address the special health anddevelopmental risks that face the young children ofadolescents may not be used.

The invisibility of teen parents and their children with-in schools and the health and social service deliverysystem obviously does not protect them from thepotential negative effects immediate and longerterm of early childbearing. In fact, it increases theirrisk for poor outcomes because often they are notconnected with available services and supports andthe services and supports they are provided may notbe designed to meet their special needs and circum-stances.

As a first step in putting in place effective strategiesfor these young families, decision makers at all levels .

need to be aware of the true numbers, circumstancesand needs of parenting adolescents within their com-munity and within individual systems. In our work wehave seen several ways in which school;based pro-grams, working with other providers and advocates,have made their communities more aware of thenumbers and needs of teen parents and their children.

SOLUTIONS FROM THE FIELD

Communities have used a number of strategies toreduce the invisibility of teen parents and their chil-dren within schools and service agencies and withinthe community. These strategies have resulted inincreased resources being directed to meeting theneeds of both the teens and their children andincreased access to services and supports. Thesestrategies include:

Using more accurate estimates of the number ofteen parents to advocate for program expansionand increased investment in services;

Developing, and in some cases mandating, proce-dures to identify teen parents and link them withservices and supports; and

Promoting the protections Title IX affords pregnantand parenting students.

Using estimates of the number of teen parents inadvocacy

Very often the number of parenting teens in a commu-nity is assumed to be the number of teen births in agiven year. In fact, of course, it is several times thatnumber when young mothers who gave birth in earli-er years and are still teenagers are included.

Procedures for more accurately estimating the num-ber of female teen parents are described in CAPD'Swebsite: http://www.capd.org/home/serviceskeen-parents/teenparents.htm. They involve summing thenumber of births to women of a particular targetage (be that 17, 18 or 19) and younger in a givenreference year and adding this number to the num-bers of births in previous years to women who arestill younger than that age. For example, assumethat only births to 17-year-olds or younger teens areof interest. In the year prior to the reference year thesum would include births to teens who were 16 oryounger in that year. For the year two years prior tothe reference year the sum would include births toteens who were 15 or younger in that year, and soon.

While estimates from this approach do not completelytake into account migration, repeat births to teens,teenage fathers, and other factors, they are defensibleand understandable benchmarks against which toassess current program enrollment and outreachefforts.

Statistical estimates of the number of teen parents inthe community have been effectively used to stimu-late public debate about strategies to address theirneeds and those of their children and to generateincreased investment in those strategies.

In Minnesota an important part of a successful lob-bying effort was demonstrating that there were

0 Copyright April 1999 by Center for Assessment and Policy Development. All rights reserved.

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Ill. Making Teen Parents and Their Children Visible le (continued)

many thousands of teen parents throughout thestate, based on the estimates from birth records asdescribed above. The coalition supporting the TeenParent Initiative in Minneapolis joined with theMinnesota chapter of the National Organization forAdolescent Pregnancy, Parenting and Prevention(MOAPPP) in 1998 to successfully lobby the statelegislature for an initial grant program to supportthe development and strengthening of school-basedteen parent programs. The same coalition, joinedagain by MOAPPP and other teen parent programsaround the state, is again engaged with the legisla-ture during its 1999 session to argue for increasedfunding and expansion of this grant program.

In another aspect of its work, the Minneapolis TeenParent Initiative brought together a group of pro-gram managers and information system staff fromthe public schools, the city health department andthe county social services agency to design andimplement a cross-agency data matching project.This project was intended to provide the communityas a whole with first-ever information on the num-bers of teen parents involved in various service sys-tems and build an initial understanding of theircareers in those systems what services theyused, when they used them relative to conceptionand delivery, and with what results. This work, stillunderway, even in its design phase has contributedto a greater recognition among publicly funded pro-grams of their shared interest in and responsibilityfor teen parents.

Using data to determine service gaps and identify

unserved teen parents

Recognizing the gap between the number of parentingteens in the community and those known to beenrolled in public school programs can spur addition-al identification and outreach.

Minnesota mandates that all teenagers who givebirth be contacted to offer services and ensure thatthere is a plan in place to ensure their child's healthand development and their own progress towardself-sufficiency. Implemented in different ways indifferent jurisdictions within the state, inMinneapolis it is the responsibility of the county

social services agency, which has created anAdolescent Parent Unit. Information on the numbersof teen parents living in the county compared to thenumber served through this unit has spurred inter-est in better communication and coordinationbetween county social services and Minneapolis'school-based teen parent programs.

Analysis of program data on other services receivedby parenting teen clients can also strengthen outreachand referral procedures across programs.

Data from the Pittsburgh Teen Parent Program indi-cated that WIC was a good potential source of refer-rals to the school-based programs because preg-nant teens had already enrolled in WIC prior toentering school-based programs. There is now anestablished referral relationship between the twoprograms.

In Pittsburgh, estimates of the gap between thenumber of parenting teens in the community andthose served in school-based programs spurredadditional outreach and referral efforts. The samewas true in Minneapolis, where various school staff(social workers, nurses, school-based health clinicstaff, counselors) were asked to identify currentlyenrolled pregnant and parenting students so thatthey can be offered the range of supports availablewithin the district.

Geomapping of the residences of teen parents, schoolsites offering teen parent programs, and the locationof child care providers, health clinics and other serviceproviders can be helpful in identifying mismatchesbetween the needs of teen parents and the accessibili-ty and appropriateness of available services and sup-ports.

Geomapping carried out by the CaliforniaDepartment of Health for the whole state has pro-vided county by county geographic distributions ofteen births using birth record data.

Promoting the protections of Title IX

Title IX offers legal protections for the rights of preg-nant and parenting students to equal access to educa-tional opportunities within public schools. Concernsabout compliance with Title IX can heighten the visi-


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III. Making Teen Parents and Their Children Visible le (continued)

bility of this group of students and make it harder tosee each individual teen parent as a special case.

The Pittsburgh Teen Parent Program has workedextensively within the school district to educateadministrators, teachers and pupil support person-nel about the requirements and protections relatedto parenting students under Title IX. This work hasmade the needs and rights of teen parents morewidely known within the district.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

We have seen the power that even rough estimates ofthe numbers of teen parents in a community can havein increasing program investments and changing pro-gram practices. Therefore, one key policy recommen-dation is that TANF, schools, health and social servicesregularly calculate rough estimates of teen parentsand their children in planning service delivery sitesand approaches, including outreach. In particular, werecommend that state and local plans for the adminis-tration of TANF funds routinely identify the total num-ber of teen parents and their children, both those cur-rently eligible for economic assistance and thosepotentially eligible. These numbers should includeteen parents who are nested within other households.

In addition, community needs assessments requiredby funding programs (such as CCDBG) should includeestimates of the numbers of teen parents and theirchildren. Further, local requests for funds related tomaternal and child health, school achievement, youthdevelopment, early childhood and school readinessprograms should indicate what priority will be givento teen parents and the children of teen parents.

Even more powerful would be statutory requirementsfor identifying and ensuring adequate support forminor parents. This may be a public health measuresuch as under Minnesota law, or a child welfare mat-ter such as in states that require mandated reportingof a pregnancy or birth to a minor under age 15,

assuming a substantial incidence of statutory rapeand/or sexual abuse among this population.

Along with these legal mandates should comeresources for carrying out assigned agency responsi-bilities.

These may include training designated staff respon-sible for teen parents and setting up appropriateaccountability and incentive systems. The technicalcapacity and resources to identify parenting teensand the children of teens may not be well devel-oped. Support may be required for informationinfrastructure enhancements and for technical assis-tance so that communities and their public agenciescan compile and analyze pertinent information. Thismay include assistance in responding to concernsabout data privacy and technical issues related toprotection of data confidentiality across systems.

In particular, there is a need for centralized responsi-bility for teen parents within schools, as many districtsmove to school-based planning and management.One task for central administration would be to carryout wider education within schools (and among otheragencies that serve teen parents) on the protections ofTitle IX as well as monitoring compliance with this lawin the same way that the rights of students with dis-abilities have been overseen. This may require addi-tional emphasis from the federal department of edu-cation on state accountability for Title IX compliancefor pregnant and parenting students.

In addition, the broader public and other provideragencies should be made more familiar with therights of parenting adolescents to educational oppor-tunities through public schools under Title IX and theavailability of subsidized child care available throughTANF to support school attendance. This is beyondthe responsibility of any community institution oragency and is likely to require the efforts of localcoalitions and state-wide advocacy, as we argue in theconclusion to this document.


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IV. HELPING THE SYSTEM WORK FOR TEEN PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN

Even when enrolled and attending school, many teenparents often struggle to make progress and areunable to complete high school within the main-stream school environment. Others who are in special"stand-alone" programs for pregnant or parentingstudents do not have access to specialized oradvanced courses. Making sure that all parenting stu-dents have the best opportunity to succeed in schooland have access to the full range of educationaloptions available in the district are challenges thatschool-based teen parent programs face.

THE CHALLENGES OF PROVIDING QUALITY,APPROPRIATE EDUCATION TO PARENTINGSTUDENTS

There are several reasons why making education pro-grams work well for teen parents can be difficult. Asnoted in the previous section, except when in separateor stand-alone schools or programs, teen parents areinvisible within the school system.

Only a fraction of teen parents are in fact served inthese programs and other teen parents are not iden-tified in school records.9

Few school districts estimate the number of teenparents who might be enrolled or who might be eli-gible for enrollment in the community (those ofschool-age who have not yet completed a highschool diploma or equivalent).

Site-based management has the effect of makingpregnant and parenting students even less visiblewithin the broader student population.

Also, many pregnant and parenting teens whetherthey remain in school or return to school have sig-nificant educational deficits and some may have unde-tected learning disabilities. There has been extensiveresearch19 pointing out the link between school fail-ure poor attendance, poor grades, school dropout

and teenage pregnancy and childbearing. Althoughteen parents are not the only group of students withthese educational needs, the fact that they also haveother needs (for child care, parenting education, casemanagement, and the like) means that they presentsubstantial challenges to the school system.

One solution is to place teen parents in stand-alonealternative or separate schools or programs. Veryoften these programs are designed to provide the spe-cial support services that teen parents need, but donot offer educational options comparable to thoseoffered in comprehensive high schools. This limitsthe ability of some teen parents in these programs todevelop their interests and competencies. At the sametime, few districts have implemented strategies toprovide support services for teen parents within com-prehensive high schools.

Title IX protects teen parents from discrimination inthe educational system based on gender, pregnancy,marital or parenting status. For example, under TitleIX school districts cannot automatically assign preg-nant or parenting students to separate schools or pro-grams unless they have the same educational offer-ings and experiences available to other students.However, the rights of teen parents to have access toequal educational opportunities are not well known bystudents, school staff or parents. Parenting students'individual educational needs and goals may not bemet.

9 Obviously, there are good reasons for this, to protect student confidentiality.

19 See J. Dryfoos, Youth At Risk: One in Four in Jeopardy. Report submitted to the Carnegie Foundation, New York,NY, 1987, and Adolescents-at-Risk: Prevalence and Prevention, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1990.


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IV. Helping the System Work for Teen Parents and Their Children (continued)


A number of strategies adopted by school districts tomeet the educational needs of pregnant and parentingstudents address the challenges noted above.

One strategy addresses the issue of the invisibility ofparenting students within the larger student popula-tion.

When districts estimate the number of girls eligibleto be served through school-based efforts 11such as was done in Minneapolis, Pittsburgh andPortland, OR for this Initiative, they usually find that,while they are serving .a substantial number of par-enting students, the number served is small in com-parison to the number of young parents who arestill eligible for school enrollment. Once the targetnumber of teen parents is shown to be considerablylarger than those currently identified, attention canbe drawn to this population and its needs within thebroader student population.

Knowing the actual number of parenting students canstimulate the placement of support services for teenparents into comprehensive high schools, rather thanonly looking at stand-alone alternatives.

Providing these services within a mainstreamschool setting, rather than only in stand-alone pro-grams, can be less costly, reach more students, andprovide access to a greater array of educationaloptions than relying on separate or alternativeschool settings for teen parents. Through theInitiative, all three sites (Minneapolis, Pittsburgh andPortland) successfully expanded the services avail-able at comprehensive high schools includingcase management, on-site child care or links tonested family day care, and health services.

Some districts recognize that the educational deficien-cies of teen parents may be comparable to the educa-tional needs of other at-risk students.

For example, the Pittsburgh public school system isconsidering the development of alternatives thatprovide varied instructional methodologies for abroad group of at- risk students. Linking the educa-tional needs of many parenting students with othersshould increase the economies of scale in develop-ing and providing alternative approaches, whetherthese be computerized instruction, individual educa-tion plans, competency-based approaches, or oth-ers. This strategy would help address the education-al needs of many teen parents, while increasingtheir access to a broader array of educational servic-es.

Education and training on Title IX provisions canaffect the educational opportunities available to teenparents.

Simply handing out a one page pamphlet from theNational Women's Law Center to students, parents,teachers, community advocates and front-line staffwho work with teen parents can raise the issue ofequal access to education. This in itself can beginan examination of implications for school policy andpractice. Further, under site-based management,many schools are responsible for developing andpromoting policies at the school-level, and with cen-tral administration support, can be asked to developpolices for pregnant and parenting teens that areconsonant with Title IX.

Even with all of these activities, however, experi-ence suggests that it is important to have some cen-tralized responsibility within the district for imple-menting Title IX protections and troubleshootingissues as they arise.

11 As noted in a previous chapter, this target number is considerably greater than the annual number of births towomen 18 and under. In fact, it is usually 2 to 3 times that number because many women who gave birth in theirteens have still not reached their 19th birthday and some have multiple births while teenagers. One method for esti-mating the total number of teen parents in a community is described in CAPD's paper, Assessing the Number ofEligible Teen Parents for School Based-Programs, which can be found on our web site at www.capd.org/home/ servic-es/teenparents/teenparents.htm).


13



There are a number of specific school practices thatcan assist parenting students, and others at risk ofschool failure and dropout, succeed in and completehigh school.12

For example, attendance policies can be createdthat do not penalize teens who have given birth bytreating their absences like any other absences dueto medical conditions and allowing credits for homestudy.

Granting partial credits for course work interruptedby delivery, scheduling to allow students to trans-port their children to child care at a reasonable hourand still reach class on time or to provide afternoontime for doctors' appointments and other parentingresponsibilities, and the creative use of summersare also examples of approaches that encourageparenting teens to continue in and complete school.


There are a number of policy changes that would cre-ate an environment in which educational systems aremore likely to implement practices that will promotethe success of parenting students.

The protections that Title IX affords pregnant andparenting students needs to be more broadly pro-moted as a matter of district policy. Students,parents, community members, school staff, adminis-trators and school board members all need to beaware of and committed to the implementation ofTitle IX. Districts and individual schools couldundoubtedly benefit from technical assistance in thisarea, and federal monitoring and enforcement of TitleIX provisions should be enhanced.

School districts should ensure that there is cen-tralized responsibility for the development andimplementation of policies to support the educationalsuccess of teen parents. This responsibility shouldinclude work in the areas of planning and evaluation,collaboration with community agencies involved with

teen parents, work with students to ensure appropri-ate educational assessment and placement, trainingand monitoring around Title IX, and the like. In addi-tion, this responsibility should extend to the youngchildren of teen parents, and link with the district'sefforts in the area of early childhood development andschool readiness.

Districts should seek to balance resources and pri-orities between enhanced services for adoles-cent parents within comprehensive high schoolsand stand-alone alternatives. No one option forparenting students will meet all students' educationalneeds and goals, and failing to offer a range ofoptions is very likely to place the district in violation ofTitle IX. Further, the only way that it would be eco-nomically and administratively feasible for a district toserve the actual number of teen parents who are orcould be in school is by expanding services beyondstand-alone alternatives.

Districts should commit core school district funds forthe development and implementation of alternativeinstruction methodologies and other innovativeeducational approaches for at-risk students withinmainstream schools. From an educational perspective,the needs of many teen parents and those of other at-risk students are similar and strategies to meet theeducational needs of teen parents can be effectivewith these other students as well. It is important tonote that promoting the educational success of at-riskstudents is likely to be an effective pregnancy preven-tion strategy, and pregnancy prevention and dropoutprevention resources should be eligible to fund devel-opment and implementation of alternative educationalapproaches that will benefit a broad group of stu-dents, including teen parents.

Replication packages and other information onalternative instructional methodologies andother educational interventions appropriate for at-riskstudents should be made available so that localschool districts have access to information on new

12 For more details and examples of programs implementing these practices, see School-Based Programs forAdolescent Parents and Their Young Children: Overcoming Barriers and Challenges to Implementing ComprehensiveSchool-Based Services. CAPD, Bala Cynwyd, PA, 1994.


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strategies for at-risk students. Special attention shouldbe given to tailoring these models to students withattendance issues and other personal problems,including family responsibilities outside of school.Obviously, such a task is beyond the staff resources orfinancial capacity of individual districts. Therefore, thisshould be the responsibility of federal and state edu-cation departments. Within those departments, thereshould be designated units and positions with a focuson parenting students and a link to those units andpositions supporting school readiness and early child-hood education efforts.

At the same time, districts should balance the pushfor high school graduation for teen parents with real-istic assessment of both student educationalneeds and status and community options for

GED completion. Schools should not abdicate theirresponsibility for ensuring that all young people intheir community are given the opportunity for acquir-ing educational skills and certification. Schools, there-fore, should work closely with school- and communi-ty-based GED programs to find appropriate place-ments for those teen parents who are far behind inschool, particularly those students who may run upagainst welfare time limits for education if theyattempt a high school diploma.

In particular, TANF resources should be used tosupport an array of educational options for teenparents in the broader community. Options couldinclude but not be limited to community colleges andother community-based educational programs.

47l) Copyright April 1999 by Center for Assessment and Policy Development. All rights reserved.

11 C


V. PROVIDING CRITICAL SERVICES AND SUPPORTSTO TEEN PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN

Education is a key to the long-term well-being of ado-lescent parents and their children, and making educa-tional systems work for teen parents is a critical priori-ty. At the same time, it is clear that many of theseyoung parents will not be able to stay in and succeedin school without additional services, including healthcare, child care, parenting education, and case man-agement. Further, assuring the health, development,school readiness and ultimately school success of thechildren of teen parents means that these young fami-lies need support services.

Our review of research evidence and best practiceshas identified a set of critical services that should beavailable through a comprehensive school-basedapproach in order to ensure the best outcomes forteen parents and their children. Not all teen parentsneed all these services or need them continuously, noris it necessary that all individual programs provide allof them on site. However, our analysis suggests that acommunity that wants its school-based efforts to havethe maximum benefit for a// teen parents and theirchildren will put in place a system of services andsupports, accessible based on need, that includes:

A core set of services offered to all pregnant andparenting adolescents for themselves and their chil-dren:

- developmentally appropriate child care;

- prenatal care and family planning services;

- preventive health care for infants and young chil-dren; and

- case management that includes assessment, careplanning and coordination of services in the areasof health, nutrition, education, parenting, psy-chosocial development, life skills and economicself-sufficiency.

A set of additional services and supports thatshould be available in sufficient supply and accessi-ble to meet the needs of pregnant and parentingteens and their children:

- transportation;

- counseling, including substance abuse counselingand treatment;

- housing assistance; and

- economic assistance.

In this section we outline the challenges inherent inmaking these services available through school-basedprograms and identify some approaches used by localcommunities to overcome these challenges. We endwith several suggested policy changes that wouldhelp expand and extend these efforts.

THE CHALLENGES OF PROVIDING CRITICALSERVICES TO ADOLESCENT PARENTS ANDTHEIR CHILDREN

There are three major sets of challenges that commu-nities face when attempting to create a system ofservices and supports linked with school-based pro-grams for teen parents and their children:

Barriers internal to schools related to bringing in orlinking with community-based services;

Limitations in the capacity of available community-based service providers to serve teen parents inage-appropriate ways and to link with schools; and

The reluctance of some teens to make use of sup-port services, whether school- or community-based.


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V. Providing Critical Services and Supports to Teen Parents and Their Children (continued)

Barriers within schools to linking with community-based services

Schools can be inhospitable environments for otherservices. They are one of the largest bureaucracies ina community, operating under very different regula-tions, labor agreements, and other restrictions fromother agencies. Schools see their primary mission aseducation and are increasingly held publicallyaccountable for the school success of the general stu-dent population, while other organizations in thehealth and social service arena have different agendasand different ways of measuring and being heldaccountable for success for their clients. Even whenschools provide support services on-site (such ascounseling by school staff or health clinics operatedby local hospitals or other providers), they are notnecessarily tailored to the needs or special circum-stances of parenting students or available to their chil-dren. And, schools are often reluctant to acceptresponsibility for providing services to the young chil-dren of teen parents, even when they recognize thelong-term impact of efforts to increase school readi-ness.

Capacity limitations of community-based providers

Many of the support services and supports needed byteen parents economic assistance, health care,housing, child development programming, case man-agement and other critical services are available inthe community, but are designed for and offered toparents and families, regardless of the age of the par-ent. While this may make these services broadly avail-able in the community, depending on other eligibilitycriteria such as income, it is also likely to mean thatthey are not specially suited to the unique needs ofteen parents and their children. Even the processesrequired for accessing and using these services mayassume a level of maturity and independence thatmany teen parents do not yet have. Identifying andmeeting the needs of adolescents and their childrenmay require special skills or capacities for whichproviders may not be prepared.

Further, there is considerable fragmentation within thehealth and social service provider community makingit difficult for there to be a coherent system-wide planfor linking services with schools. Thus, school-basedprograms must negotiate these arrangements on anad hoc basis with many different organizations, whileat the same time there is often resistence to changingthe catchment areas, sites and times at which servicesare offered to fit more closely with school schedulesor to offer services at schools. Some agencies do notsee advantages of linking with schools to identify teenparents who may need their services, when they arealready unable to meet additional demand (as in thecase of subsidized housing) or may be experiencingpressure to reduce the number of clients (as for publicassistance benefits).

Reluctance of teens to use services

Adolescents themselves very often resist seeking outand using available support services. Even when suchservices are offered to them, it often takes specialefforts to deal with the concerns of teen parents fortheir own independence and authority over decisionsaffecting themselves and their children, while provid-ing them with appropriate information and guidancein making appropriate decisions.

For example, many teen parents are reluctant, at leastinitially, to use formal child care programs, preferringrelative care. It is often hard to ensure the quality andstability of relative care arrangements or to use suchcare settings to link teens and their children with othersupport services. While these issues face other par-ents who must choose child care, making sure thisdecision is an informed one for parenting teens mayrequire special effort. Helping teens consider all facetsof their decision about child care in light of their ownneeds and the needs of their child is often a delicateprocess, one that must take into account teen parentfears for the well-being of their child in the hands of"strangers" and sometimes the pressure teens mayfeel from their families to keep their children athome."

13 In addition to believing in the importance of caring for children at home, some families may look to child carestipends provided for relative care as a way to supplement income and teen parents may feel an obligation to helptheir families in this way.


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We have seen a number of ways in which individualcommunities have brought support services to school-based teen parent programs.14 They include:

Linking community providers with schools in thefollowing ways:

- outstationing staff from health and social serviceagencies at schools (for example, in St. Paul,Minnesota, where JOBS workers from the countyare housed in schools to provide case manage-ment services to participating students);

- providing space at school sites for operation ofsatellite offices like health clinics (for example, inColumbus, Ohio, where a local hospital uses amobile medical van to provide prenatal care tostudents at a high school site); and

- bringing services to school sites on a rotatingbasis (for example, in Pinellas County, Florida,where the county health department provides atraveling well-baby clinic for the children of stu-dents in the schools' teen parent programs).

Creating referral arrangements so that school orschool-based staff (nurses, social workers, coun-selors) can link students to off-site services thishas been particularly effective in making familyplanning services available to students where localpolicy does not permit reproductive health issues tobe addressed by school staff or in school facilities.

Providing specialized training and support to bothstaff and family involved with teen parents and theirchildren for example, Minneapolis has a networkof family day care providers who receive on-goingtraining and are compensated at a higher rate fortheir work with teen parents and their children. Inaddition, a training program has been developed forthe staff in school-based child care centers.

Setting up alternative school sites at supervised liv-ing arrangements for teen parents where other serv-ices are also provided.15 The Juvenile Horizons pro-gram in St. Paul, Minnesota, which offers a thera-peutic living environment for teen parents and theirchildren, has a public school-operated educationalprogram on site.

Putting in place cross-agency comprehensive casemanagement for teen parents and their children.Two of the Initiative sites Minneapolis andPortland focused considerable effort on develop-ing the procedures, tools and school-communityprovider relationships necessary to implement com-prehensive case management. In Minneapolis thefocus was on ensuring a coordinated way to identifyand respond quickly to school attendance issuesamong parenting students. In Portland systemdevelopment focused on providing standardizedassessment and case management services to bothTANF and non-TANF teen parents.

However, it appears that the strategy with the greatestpotential for broad impact and sustainability is to putin place a network among community-based providersand schools with the will, authority and resources todevelop, sustain and strengthen a system of supportsand services for teen parents and their children.

In states where the state has funded case manage-ment for teen parents (California and Rhode Island),it has been easier for communities to build the net-work and develop such a system. In both states,state case management funds for teen parents areaccompanied by a responsibility to identify a com-munity convener or coordinator for the providersystem, which generally includes schools, publicassistance, social services, health and housing.While communities have discretion about whichagency will take on this responsibility and adminis-ter the state funds, there are requirements thatbring the schools and other public entities to the

14 Some communities are cited below, but more details on solutions and more examples are described in our earlierreport, School-Based Programs for Adolescent Parents and Their Young Children: Overcoming Barriers and Challengesto Implementing Comprehensive School-Based Services. CAPD, Bala Cynwyd, PA, 1994.

15 See S. T Batten and S. J. Koenig, Local Implementation of the TANF Minor Teen Parent Living Arrangement Rule,Bala Cynwyd, PA: CAPD, January 29, 1999, for more general information.


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table. These state efforts have gone a long waytoward helping communities overcome institutionaland organizational barriers to collaboration. Theyhave provided the funding necessary to operateprovider networks and to develop local systems ofservices and supports linked to schools.

Minneapolis and Portland do not have a state-levelmandate or resources. However, their locally-drivenwork on case management has marked the begin-nings of such a system. Both sites were able to usefoundation grants to obtain consultant support forfacilitation of cross-agency work sessions and tech-nical assistance in the development of forms andprocedures and in staff training.


As noted above, there are many hurdles to overcomein linking community-based services with school-based programs for teen parents. Community serv-ice providers especially those charged withsupporting early child development need toconsider schools as an important potential sitefor delivering services to, or at least reaching, parent-ing teens and their children. At the same time, theeducational system needs to see community providersand agencies as a way to reach teen parents who maynot be engaged in or only marginally connected withschools. While there is considerable goodwill andshared interest in helping these vulnerable youngfamilies, overcoming the natural barriers to workingmore closely together would be greatly facilitated byfunding incentives.

Public and private funding of community provideragencies, including early childhood service providers,should include requirements to implement strate-gies that link with school-based programs forteen parents and their children. (As noted in the nextsection, there are special opportunities for use ofTANF resources to strengthen links with school-basedprograms for parenting teens.) School districts shouldalso be held accountable, and provided financialincentives, by their boards for developing relation-ships with community agencies that bring supportservices into schools for at-risk students, including

parenting students. They should also be expected toenhance the school readiness of the children of teenparents by helping establish links with health andchild development services, whether through on-sitechild care or other child care settings, for the childrenof all parenting students.

One approach to this would be to develop flexiblefunding streams that pay for comprehensivecoordinated case management services for allteen parents and their children, regardless of eligibili-ty for public assistance or other means-tested bene-fits. Research such as the evaluation of Ohio's LEAPprogram has shown the effectiveness of providingcase management to parenting teens at school sites.These services need not be provided by school staff,but should ensure that parenting teens are supportedto complete their education and acquire the necessaryacademic and life skills necessary to become self-suf-ficient. Case management services should also focuson the health and development of the children of teenparents. Thus, the outcomes that case managementservices should be designed to achieve include notonly the immediate educational engagement and suc-cess of teen parents, but also their long-term chancesfor self-sufficiency and their children's chances forschool readiness and early school success.

Making case management successful in both the longand short run and for both teen parents and their chil-dren will require the development of standards ofpractice and accountability systems that supportthese goals. Further, case management will only workto the extent that there is a system of services andsupports appropriate to meet identified needs andimplement individualized service plans. Therefore,funding and technical assistance are needed to sup-port the development of a community system,including creating a forum for establishing connec-tions and building relationships among providersincluding the schools, exploring and overcoming bar-riers to information sharing and exchange, and devel-oping joint accountability that acknowledges eachprovider organization's unique contribution while stillholding the entire system responsible for parentingteen and child outcomes.

a Copyright April 1999 by Center for Assessment and Policy Development. All rights reserved.

10



Finally, additional support for the documentationand dissemination of information on effectivepractices in working with teen parents and their chil-dren should be part of a public and private funders'agenda in the areas of family strengthening, economic

self-sufficiency and early child development. Thisinformation then needs to be translated into trainingfor front-line staff in the various service agenciesand providers who have the opportunity to work withteen parents or the children of teens.


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VI. LINKING SCHOOLS WITH TANF SERVICES AND RESOURCES

The welfare reform legislation that created theTemporary Assistance to Needy Families to replacethe open-ended entitlement system of AFDC recog-nizes the unique circumstances of teen parents in twoimportant ways. First, it stipulates that federal TANFbenefits may be provided only to teen parents livingunder adult supervision, usually with their parents orother adult relative, except in individual circumstanceswhere that requirement has been waived by thestate.16 Second, it requires that teen parents receivingTANF benefits who are younger than 18 and who havenot completed their high school education or equiva-lent be enrolled in and attend an educational program.It is the latter requirement that offers an opportunity,and presents special challenges, for communities.

The requirement that teen parents receiving TANFparticipate in educational programs brings schools tothe forefront in efforts to reduce long-term welfaredependency. This requirement increases potentialdemand for school-based programs and services forteen parents, and evidence from earlier welfarereform efforts (such as the LEAP program in Ohio)indicates that this can be an effective strategy. TANFagencies are now looking to school districts to helpthem meet this requirement and there are clear bene-fits to coordinated planning and implementationbetween schools and public assistance agencies.However, these two institutions have not traditionallyworked together and doing so raises a number ofchallenges.

This section highlights a number of the specific chal-lenges inherent in attempts to link the educational andpublic assistance programs. Several examples of com-munity efforts are described to illustrate ways inwhich these challenges can be overcome at the locallevel. Recommendations are then outlined for policyaction that would help communities make more effec-tive use of the TANF requirements. These policieswould ensure that the goal of increasing economicself-sufficiency for teen parents is achieved and nega-tive consequences for them and their children areavoided.

THE CHALLENGES OF LINKING SCHOOLSWITH TANF

The TANF requirement that teen parents receivingbenefits participate in an educational program affectsboth those currently in school who must be sup-ported to continue to attend and make progresstoward graduation and parenting school dropouts

who are attempting to return to school to obtain ormaintain benefits. Many teen parents in both groupsof current TANF recipients face substantial obstaclesto their successfully completing school. In addition,parenting teens not currently eligible for or receivingbenefits now are at significant risk of becoming TANFrecipients at some point in the future, especially thosewho have had poor attendance and low academic per-formance." This situation is the backdrop to a num-ber of organizational and institutional challenges tousing schools as a vehicle for welfare reform.

16 The 1996 federal law establishing Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) generally prohibits an unmar-ried, minor custodial parent from receiving federally-funded benefits, unless she is living with a parent, legal guardian,or adult relative. There are a number of exemptions permitted under the law, and in those instances states arerequired to provide or assist in locating an alternative "adult-supervised supportive living arrangement" unless itdetermines that the current living arrangement is appropriate. See M. Greenberg and S. Savner, A Detailed Summaryof Key Provisions of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Block Grant, Washington, DC: CLASP 1996.

17 The next section discusses the need to provide support services to parenting students who are not currently TANFrecipients and strategies to create the resources to do so.


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VI. Linking Schools with TANF Services and Resources (continued)

TANF sets up high expectations for teen parent benefi-ciaries who are enrolled in school. School attendanceis expected to move parenting teens toward economicself-sufficiency by providing them with the knowledgeand skills needed to take their place in the work force.Yet TANF requirements do not fully take into accountthe educational deficits of many teen parents or thesupports that are needed for them to successfullyattain a solid education, while at the same time schoolsystems often do not have the capacity to meet theneeds of students who require not only remedial edu-cational services, but also an array of other supportsto stay in and succeed in school.

In practice, it appears that in implementing this TANFrequirement most local and state public assistanceagencies have assumed that requiring that teen parentbeneficiaries enroll in school will have the desiredresults. Given what we know about the need to pro-vide alternative educational options and an array ofsupport services for many such students (described inearlier sections), it seems that a coordinated effortbetween school and TANF policies and practices willbe desirable.

However, in most communities there has been littleconnection between the educational system and thepublic agencies responsible for administering eco-nomic assistance. The traditional separation of thework of these two systems is reinforced by a numberof factors, including:

Differences in terminology and staff training;

Unfamiliarity with each other's rules, policies,reporting requirements, governing regulations, andbasic operating information; and

Legal, technical and organizational difficulties inaccessing or sharing information from each other.

Further, TANF had to be put in place relatively quickly,calling for considerable changes within the publicassistance program. While regulations and procedureswere still being developed, it was difficult for TANFagencies to bring schools into a conversation about

how welfare reform would impact schools and howschools might become more of a partner in helpingteen parents move toward self-sufficiency. Schools,not engaged in local planning for and unsure of theimplications of TANF implementation, generally didnot take active steps or have the resources to buildtheir capacity to meet the educational and supportneeds of parenting students.18 In most communities,the lack of a forum for communication and joint plan-ning hampered work to prepare to make best use ofthe TANF educational requirement to improve educa-tional outcomes for teen parents.


In some states, strategies have been developed toencourage school-TANF linkages.

The ELECT program in Pennsylvania uses TANFfunds to help local districts offer services to teenparents enrolled in school. This program has estab-lished ongoing relationships between school dis-tricts and local TANF agencies. In Pittsburgh, forexample, there was joint training between school-based teen parent advocates and Department ofPublic Welfare staff about available subsidized childcare for parenting students. This relationship hasalso offered advocates opportunities to connectindividual teens with community-based supportservices. In addition, support for the advocates hadmade it possible for them to engage in pregnancyprevention education for students in the earlygrades as a welfare prevention measure.

In the District of Columbia, teen parents under 20without a high school diploma are automaticallyreferred to the schools and the district receivesfunds from the TANF block grant to provide educa-tional and related services to these students.

Ohio's welfare reform effort, LEAP, implemented aset of strategies to improve school attendance andcompletion for teen parents receiving public assis-tance. These included providing case managementservices by social service agency staff and support-ing child care on site at schools.

18 This is not surprising, given that there was little coordination on welfare reform policies at the federal levelbetween the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services.


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VI. Linking Schools with TANF Services and Resources (continued)

There have also been local efforts at school-TANF col-laboration.

In Minneapolis, virtually all teen parents enrolled inschool are eligible for child care subsidy for eitheron-site or in special family day care homes. Theschool district has been responsible for providingthe county economic assistance unit with regularreports on school attendance by eligible teen par-ents. During the early implementation of federalwelfare reform, the county and the school districtjointly reviewed attendance policies and reportingrequirements and have worked, together with com-munity-based home visiting programs for youngfamilies, to develop a coordinated approach toattendance tracking and early intervention with teenparents whose attendance is poor.

In Portland, the welfare agency has provided fund-ing for case management services for TANF-eligibleparenting students in the city's schools. These serv-ices are provided through contract with a communi-ty-based program that works closely with the teenparent liaisons in the schools. Schools, the serviceprovider, and the county economic assistanceagency have collaborated to develop a case man-agement system that stretches TANF funds andexisting community resources to support all teenparents in school.


State and local planning and implementation of TANFoffers many opportunities to strengthen school-basedprograms for teen parents, but certain policies mustbe promoted to ensure that these opportunities arerealized.

Federal and state TANF agencies should require thatplans for the implementation of TANF addressthe special needs and circumstances of parent-ing teen recipients. Particularly in light of therequirements for school attendance, developing and

monitoring these plans should actively involve localschool districts and other providers of educationalservices. These plans should address issues related tothe educational deficits of many teen parent TANFrecipients. In particular, given these deficits, it may belikely that some will be unable to complete regularhigh school education requirements prior to age 18when they are required to begin meeting workrequirements. Therefore, such a plan may need toconsider support for a broader range of educationalalternatives for parenting teens in the community.

Local TANF agencies and school districts shoulddevelop joint procedures for identifying parent-ing teen TANF recipients and referring them toappropriate educational programs. These proce-dures should ensure that the educational and otherneeds of teen parents and their children are assessedand that placements are available to provide themwith both appropriate educational programs and withthe necessary support services. In addition, these pro-cedures should provide for tracking and responding toattendance problems in a timely way and for monitor-ing progress toward successful school completion.

TANF funds should be used to support the develop-ment of school capacity to effectively educateteen parents. These funds could be used to developappropriate options (including curriculum and staffdevelopment) for parenting students with significanteducational deficits as well as support case manage-ment services for these students and their children.States should target some of their surplus TANF fundsto extend these support services to parenting studentswho are not currently TANF recipients, but who maybecome welfare eligible if they do not complete theireducation. TANF funds should also be used to sup-port the development of school-based teen par-ent programs that provide supports to parenting stu-dents and link both teen parents and their childrenwith community services.


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VII. PROVIDING SERVICES TO ALL TEEN PARENTS, BOTH NON-TANF AND TANF

\Many teen parents are not eligible for or receivingTANF today, but are likely to be so in the future if theydo not receive supportive services that help them tostay in school. A broad welfare prevention strategywould include mechanisms to ensure that all teen par-ents are provided these supports while in school,regardless of their welfare status.

THE CHALLENGES OF PROVIDING SERVICESTO ALL TEEN PARENTS, REGARDLESS OFTAN F STATUS

There are two major challenges to providing supportservices to non-TANF as well as TANF teen parentsand their children. First and foremost, there is no sta-ble public source of funding universally available topay for child care, case management and other sup-port services for all teen parents regardless of TANFstatus. Second, while there are often a variety offunding sources available that could pay for somesupport services for some non-TANF teen parents,there is no single entity within a community withresponsibility and authority to pull those resourcestogether.


There are a number of strategies local communitiesand states have taken to create some flexibleresources so that a broader group of teen parents,beyond those eligible for public welfare assistance,can receive support services.

In several states, flexible state resources are providedto localities (in particular, school districts) through for-mulas based on the numbers of teen parents servedthrough schools. Generally, the resources come to thedistrict in the form of supplemental average dailyattendance dollars. These enhanced average daily

attendance (ADA) formulas generate additional rev-enues for local school districts that are flexible in howthey can be used. These funds can be used for educa-tion, child care, case management, summer program-ming and so on, with no income restrictions on thestudents to which these services can be provided.

In Florida, the program is called the Teenage ParentProgram (TAP) and is administered through thestate Department of Education. Districts receivestate education monies for each teen parent in anapproved TAP program (at a rate of 1.6 FTE or full-time equivalent). The children of teen parents arealso enrolled as students, assigned an ID numberand included in the district's full time equivalentcount. These funds can pay for most programmaticelements for school-based programs for teen par-ents and their children, including child care whetheron site or not." Some but not all of the dollarsgoing to local districts under this program arerequired to be spent on teen parents.

Oregon's prcgram is quite similar with respect toteen parents in that districts receive weighted reim-bursements for the number of adolescent parentsthey serve. The monies go to the districts, but arenot required to be spent on teen parents. There arefew restrictions on how these monies can be spent.

The State of California has had a state-funded pro-gram providing reimbursements to counties forservices specifically for pregnant and parentingminors. The California legislature has just passed anew bill, patterned after the Florida law, called CAL-SAFE. CALSAFE replaces three programs for preg-nant and parenting teens and their children current-ly funded at $43 million, while also expanding serv-ices.

19 More information on Florida's funding approach is provided in School-Based Programs for Adolescent Parents andTheir Young Children: Overcoming Barriers and Challenges in Implementing Comprehensive School-Based Services,CAPD, Bala Cynwyd, PA, 1994, page 70.


2 4


VII. Providing Services to all Teen Parents, Both Non-TANF and TANF (continued)

The flexibility and administrative ease of using stateeducational formulas make it possible for the funds topay for a broad range of services for all parenting stu-dents regardless of income or welfare status.However, use of such formulas also allows districts touse these funds to pay for any services to any groupof students. Thus, once in the district's coffers, theadditional state funds generated by enrolling teen par-ents and their children may not necessarily be allocat-ed to services for these students. Advocates for teenparent services who want their state to take thisapproach to funding should build language into anyauthorizing legislation requiring that additionalresources which come to the district be spent for thebenefit of teen parents and their children.

There are other strategies for serving non-TANF aswell as TANF teen parents.

Pennsylvania's state-funded program providesresources to school districts for support services forteen parents who meet income eligibility require-ments. However, in Pittsburgh subsidized child careis available to all teen parents who are enrolled inschool, regardless of income, because other publicfunding streams (specifically, CCDBG) have placedhighest priority on serving teen parents among itstarget groups.

In Hennepin County, Minnesota (which includesMinneapolis) the county social services agencymakes both case management services and childcare subsidies available to all teen parents, regard-less of TANF status. The funds for these services area combination of state and county general fund dol-lars.

These various strategies are encouraging in that theysuggest both state and local strategies for creatingnew funding streams and more effectively accessingexisting funding streams to support teen parent serv-ices. However, states have an opportunity now, withtheir TANF surplus dollars, to begin to build a broadwelfare prevention strategy by funding support servic-es for non-TANF teen parents so that they can stay inand complete school, avoiding the need to rely onpublic economic assistance.


Given the importance of support services to help teenparents stay in and complete school and to ensurethat their children get off to a good start, it makessense to craft national, state and local policies to pro-vide these services to all parenting adolescents and todo so as much as possible through school-based pro-grams.

State TANF policies and regulations should allow andin fact encourage support to non-TANF as well asTANF teen parents as a welfare preventionstrategy. This welfare prevention strategy should besupported with TANF surplus dollars among otherresources. States could offer demonstration dollars toselected communities to develop replicable modelsfor implementing such strategies.

In allocating other public funds for support servicessuch as child care subsidies, case management andparenting education, community agencies or boardsshould place high priority on teen parents andthe children of teen parents. These funds can thenbe used to pay for services available to TANF-eligibleparenting teens.

States should enact and fund legislation to provideadditional resources to school districts basedon the number of teen parents and children ofteen parents served through schools. Theseresources should be provided for the children of teenparents who are registered in such programs regard-less of the location of child care (on-site or not). Whensuch resources flow to the schools, they should beflexible enough to pay for a wide range of servicesand supports, but should be earmarked for expendi-tures on behalf of the teen parents and their children.

State funding should also support the provision oftechnical assistance to local districts on how tobuild effective school-based programs, includingdevelopment of a range of educational options. Theyshould not provide differential fiscal incentives for theschools to create stand-alone schools rather thanembedding services in the comprehensive highschools.


25


VIII. CREATING A COORDINATED PLAN AND COMREHENSIVESYSTEM FOR TEEN PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN

When CAPD began our work on school-based pro-grams for adolescent parents and their children sixyears ago, we were struck by the observations of GailZellman about such programs.20 She concluded that,while individual school-based programs existed thatmet some of the needs of pregnant and parentingteens, none offered a comprehensive program. Shealso noted that schools cannot take on the responsibil-ity for leadership, policy development and servicedelivery for teen parents alone; other communityagencies and organizations can and should beinvolved.

Zellman's conclusions, written in 1982, seemed to usequally applicable in 1994 when we published ournationwide review of school-based programs. Fiveyears later they still seem apropos.

As a field we know much about how to craft program-matic approaches to meeting the needs of teen par-ents and their children through school-based pro-grams. There are many examples at the school, dis-trict or community and state level of practices andpolicies that can contribute to the ability of school- -based programs to help parenting adolescents andtheir children move toward long-term success in life.We also have seen how, with some additional fundingand technical assistance, it is possible to assist school-based programs to expand the scale, scope and quali-ty of their efforts, even in the face of serious chal-lenges.

At the same time, we have seen school-based pro-grams continue to struggle with the expectations thatschools will meet the needs of parenting students ontheir own, even as resources for schools are stretchedthinner and thinner. School-based programs alsostruggle to meet the broader needs of young families,including adolescent fathers and the children of teenparents. Almost all the other services and supports

needed by these young families, other than educationof school-aged children, are outside of the schools'domain. And often the potential to bring the other crit-ical services to teen parents and their children throughschool-based programs goes unrealized, as does thepotential for creating a comprehensive system thatoffers both school- and community-based supports forthese young families and all their members.

Underlying the challenges described in this paper isthe fact that most communities have no natural arenafor identifying and convening the array of public andprivate programs, providers and agencies, includingthe schools, that have a role or potential role in help-ing adolescents and their children get over the hurdlesthat come with teenage childbearing. Typically, thereis no one entity within a community with responsibili-ty for ensuring that teen parents and their children getoff to a good start as individuals and as a family unit,and there is generally no place where all the systemscan come together to develop a coordinated and com-prehensive strategy. Instead, there are many agenciesand organizations, including schools, with a piece ofthat responsibility.

We believe that both adolescent parents and their chil-dren would benefit if communities put in place a coor-dinated strategy that brings together all a communi-ty's resources currently or potentially available forthese vulnerable young families in a way that maxi-mizes their impact. Such a strategy would address theneeds and opportunities for parenting teens, bothmothers and fathers, and their children, regardless ofincome eligibility or beneficiary status.

Creating a framework for collaboration among publicagencies, private providers and schools toward acommon agenda on behalf of teen parents and theirchildren will be difficult. Yet we feel that is the neces-sary next step, if we want to go beyond the efforts of

20Zellman, G. L., "Public School Programs for Adolescent Pregnancy and Parenthood: An Assessment." FamilyPlanning Perspectives, Vol. 14, pages 15-82 (1982).



VIII. Creating a Coordinated plan and ComprehensiveSystem for Teen Parents and Tehir Children (continued)

individual school- and community-based programs toa strategy that builds strong young families for thefuture. It would create the necessary collective leader-ship within and across key agencies and institutions totackle the barriers to coordination and could put inplace the following important elements of a communi-ty strategy:

Recognition of young families as being comprisedof mothers, fathers and their children as a unit, evenif not living together, and of the full range of needsof all individual family members and of the familyunit;

Development of a community-wide vision andaction plan to support young families;

Coordination of services and resources across andwithin key agencies, including education, economicassistance, child welfare, health and housing, aswell as community-based provider organizations;

Clarification of roles and responsibilities acrossagencies and provider organizations;

Investments in building staff capacity in key agen-cies and organizations to implement best practicesin their work with young parents and their children;and

Promotion of public will on behalf of young fami-lies, countering common attitudes about teen moth-ers and non-custodial fathers that limit willingnessto use public funds to offer support and provideservices.

What will it take to put together a coherent compre-hensive strategy for teen parents and their children?Experience in this initiative and in other related effortssuggests that a number of factors need to cometogether.

Broader public awareness and education on theneeds of young families started by teen parents andon the opportunities to make a difference for theiryoung children as well as for the adolescents them-selves is needed to overcome attitudinal barriers.

27

Voters, school board members, teachers and schoolpersonnel, agency and provider staff, parents andadvocates all need to believe that providing sup-ports through school-based programs is feasible,effective and sound public policy. Concerns basedon moral values and negative opinions about par-enting teens need to be addressed, so that theseyoung families can become a high priority on thecommunity's agenda.

There are many potential leaders within most com-munities who could champion a comprehensivestrategy for teen parents and their children.However, they generally operate within agencies ororganizations with wider responsibilities or that onlyaddress some of the issues faced by these youngfamilies. Incentives, resources and other supportswould be helpful in identifying and bringing togeth-er natural leaders who could be the catalyst forcommunity coalitions.

Similarly, investments in the work of building a net-work of agencies and providers are needed. Thesenetworks are essential for building the relationshipsand providing the forum for working through themany tough organizational, disciplinary and otherissues that would arise if increased coordination ofservices and policies is desired.

Work at the state and federal levels is also impor-tant, both to create the necessary resources forcommunity-level efforts and also to deal with policyIssues beyond community borders. Without cleardirection and support (in many forms funding,policy guidelines, performance standards and out-come goals, technical assistance, information, etc.),local efforts frequently struggle to build momentumand are hard to sustain over time.

With these factors in place, our communities wouldhave a much greater chance of creating the system ofservices and supports linked with schools and coordi-nated to reach all teen parents and their children withwhat they need to become strong and productive fam-ilies. It is an investment well worth making.



Summary of Policy Implications (continued)

TANF funds should be used to support the develop-ment of school capacity to effectively educate teenparents and to link teen parents and their childrenwith community services.

Providing services to all teen parents, both non-TANF and TANF

State TANF policies and regulations should allowand in fact encourage support to non-TANF as wellas TANF teen parents as a welfare prevention strate-

gy.

In allocating other public funds for support servicessuch as child care subsidies, case management andparenting education, community agencies or boardsshould place high priority on teen parents and thechildren of teen parents.

States should enact and fund legislation to provideadditional resources to school districts based on thenumber of teen parents and children of teen parentsserved through schools.

State funding should also support the provision oftechnical assistance to local districts on how tobuild effective school-based programs, includingdevelopment of a range of educational options.

28

TAKING THE NEXT STEP: A BROADCOMMUNITY-WIDE STRATEGY FOR YOUNGFAMILIES

The experience of the Initiative also supports the needfor a broader, community-wide strategy one thatcreates a coordinated plan and builds a comprehen-sive system for teen parents and their children.School-based programs will be a necessary and majorcomponent of such a broad strategy, but their effortsmust be complemented by community-based pro-grams and services. These will be required not onlyto reach older teen mothers whose educational andother needs cannot be effectively met in school-basedprograms, but particularly to ensure that teen fathersand the children of teen parents are adequatelyserved.

Such a community-wide strategy must come from nota single institution or agency, but from a coalition ofpublic and private organizations that touch the lives ofyoung families. In most communities now, there is noone entity within a community with responsibility forensuring that teen parents and their children get off toa good start as individuals and as a family unit, andthere is generally no place where all the systems cancome together to develop a coordinated and compre-hensive strategy. Instead, there are many agenciesand organizations, including schools, with a piece ofthat responsibility.

Creating a framework for collaboration among publicagencies, private providers and schools toward acommon agenda on behalf of teen parents and theirchildren will be difficult. Yet we feel that is the neces-sary next step, if we want to go beyond the efforts ofindividual school- and community-based programs toa strategy that builds strong young families for thefuture. Therefore, we end this policy document with abrief discussion of the likely products of such a strate-gy, and of what it will take to make such a strategy areality.



I. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank a number of individuals andorganizations whose commitment to improving thewell-being and life chances of young families helpedmake the successes of the Initiative to StrengthenSchool-Based Programs for Adolescent Parents andTheir Young Children possible.

First, we would like to thank the foundations that gen-erously provided the funding for the Initiative in PhaseII, the effort to strengthen school-based programs inthree sites. These foundations and key staff were:Foundation for Child Development, Sheila Smith; TheVira I. Heinz Endowment, Margaret Petruska; TheCharles Stewart Mott Foundation, Jon Blyth,

Lorin Harris and Christine Sturgis.

We also want to acknowledge the support provided byseveral foundations for the national reconnaissanceduring Phase I of the Initiative, including: TheFoundation for Child Development; The StuartFoundations; The William and Flora HewlettFoundation; the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and theCalifornia Wellness Foundation.

A number of individuals supported the Initiative byoffering their technical expertise and advice on cross-site issues. We especially wish to thank DeborahBrake, University of Pittsburgh;

Terry Hart, President, Info Nation Systems; FranLochte, Metis Associates; Roberta Malavenda, ChildCare Support Center; Denise Peebles, West OaklandHealth Center; Mike Sack, consultant; SalvatoreSaporito, consultant; and Carl Valentine, Institute forHuman Services Management.

Of course, it was the Initiative staff in each site whomust be given credit for their vision, dedication, cre-ativity, and persistence in tackling all the challenges ofoperating and strengthening school-based programsin their communities. CAPD is grateful for the oppor-tunity to work with these remarkable individuals: inMinneapolis, MN, Barbara Kyle, Program Supervisor;in Pittsburgh, PA, Kathy Short, Project Manager, SallyMole, Child Care Project Manager, and Jan Ripper,Staff Specialist; and in Portland, OR, Mary Karter, TeenParent Services Coordinator.

Finally, we want to thank Judy Barci of CAPD for hersupport to the Initiative and to CAPD staff. As projectsecretary, she was responsible for managing traveland other logistical arrangements for Initiative site vis-its, meetings and conferences; handled correspon-dence and other communication, including productionof Initiative documents for CAPD's Web site; producedand distributed Initiative reports; and generally madesure that none of the details on this multi-year, multi-site effort slipped through the cracks.

29



II. INTRODUCTION

This policy paper addresses how to strengthenschool-based efforts for adolescent parents and theirchildren so that they can be more effective in meetingthe needs and improving outcomes of these youngfamilies. Based on the experience and lessons of asix-year initiative funded by several national founda-tions and administered by the Center for Assessmentand Policy Development (CAPD), this document laysout specific challenges faced by school-based pro-grams and describes solutions to these challengesdeveloped in the field. But the major focus is on iden-tifying policy changes at the community, state andfederal levels and those appropriate to private funders

that would allow these solutions to be more broad-ly implemented.

THE POTENTIAL OF SCHOOL-BASEDPROGRAMS FOR ADOLESCENT PARENTSAND THEIR YOUNG CHILDREN

Adolescent parents and their children are two particu-larly vulnerable groups in our society whose long-term life chances are interconnected. Both are at crit-ical points in their lives, where their life courses canbe shaped toward healthy development, stability, andproductivity, or toward life-long poverty and depend-ency. And we know that, without support, many ofthese young families will struggle with poverty and itseffects:

While teen parents represent only a small portion ofthe welfare case load at any given point in time, themajority of welfare recipients started their childbearing as teenagers.

Forty-seven percent of all poor children under theage of six had an adolescent parent at birth.2

Children born into and living in poverty are morelikely than other children to have poor birth out-comes, to be sicker during childhood, to experiencemore and greater developmental delays, to be lesswell prepared for school, and to be less successfulin school.

Efforts to improve outcomes for these young familiesmust take advantage of every opportunity to connectthem with the services and supports that will helpthem move toward positive growth toward successin the worlds of school, work and parenting for theteens and toward healthy development and schoolreadiness for their young children. We know thatschools can be an effective locus for providing teensand their children with services and supports essentialto their long-term success.

Evidence from a host of programs suggests thatproviding comprehensive services to teen parentsonce they have left school is not likely to lead toimprovements in outcomes.3

Intervening at and through schools by providingcase management and on-site child care producesmore promising outcomes in terms of school per-formance for teen parents.4

On-site or specialized off-site child care and school-based health services also provide opportunities forensuring that the young children of teen parentshave access to basic preventive and developmentalservices.

2 Five Million Children: A Statistical Profile of Our Poorest Young Citizens. National Center for Children in Poverty, NewYork, NY, 1990.

3 For example, while the New Chance demonstration showed significant effects on GED receipt, there were noimpacts on the likelihood of moving from welfare into the job market or on the timing or frequency of repeat pregnan-cies (CITE).

4 See, for example , LEAP: Final Report on Ohio's Welfare Initiative to Improve School Attendance among TeenageParents, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, New York, NY, 1997.

© Copyright April 1999 by Center for Assessment and All rights reserved.

CAPDCENTER FOR ASSESSMENT AND POLICY DEVELOPMENT

IMPROVING OUTCOMES FOR YOUNG CHILDREN,

FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES

Lessons Learned

WENDY C. WOLFSALLY A. LEIDERMAN

LESSONS LEARNED ACROSSRECENT PROJECTS

There is some new evidence, and new thinkingabout next steps to be tried, about what it mighttake for children, families and communities tothrive.

New psycho neurological research supports thenecessity to pay attention to the very earliest yearsof a child's life (pre-conception, prenatally and inthe first three years).

There is a renewed focus on individual responsibili-ty for children's well-being across very differentpolitical ideologies.

There continues to be no institutional or systemhome charged with overseeing a collective respon-sibility for the well-being of young children.

Efforts to improve outcomes at the system leveltend to pull attention away from practice at thefront-line, or specific interactions between childrenand those responsible for their well-being (childcare providers, teachers, recreation sponsors).

Evidence of the effectiveness of some promisinginterventions family support, family preservationand home visiting is mixed.

Early child well-being is made up of multiple dimen-sions with respect to the child (cognitive, social,physical, emotional) and with respect to factors thatinfluence well-being (family, neighborhood, commu-nity). School readiness is an emerging conceptthat focuses on these multiple dimensions. Theconcept includes, for example, making schools andcommunities ready for children, not just thereverse.

There have always been trade-offs between devel-oping universal, non-stigmatizing efforts to improveoutcomes for children and meeting the needs ofspecialized populations. Given scarce resources,one of the ways out of this bind is to broaden ourthinking about the full range of individual and col-lective actions that might improve outcomes forchildren, and to create both universal and targetedactivities within each sphere. For example, thereare opportunities to embed child development activ-ities more fully within libraries, recreational andspiritual settings, etc.

Experience indicates better ways to designand share models:

A broad vision is critical for creating a broad-basedconstituency to improve outcomes, but it must betempered by realistic short-term and interim goalsand benchmarks. There is a tension between work-ing from a vision that is worth the effort and makingpeople feel the work is doable.

Using an outcomes orientation, and working fromjointly developed theories of change (see examples)are useful strategies to help people manage com-plex change processes and to keep work focused.

Models that are sufficient to achieve improved out-comes for children, families and communities arenecessarily complex, comprehensive and long-term.When they are based on research, they will alsohave some elements that are fixed (to avoid rein-venting the wheel). But because there is much thatwe do not know about how to improve outcomes,particularly for all children or on a broad scale givencurrent systems and funding constraints, modelsmust also incorporate flexibility to promote innova-tion.

Copyright March 1997 by Center for Assessment and Policy.Development. All rights reserved.

31


Improving Outcomes for Young Children, Families and Communities (continued)

Not only are these models difficult to build andimplement, they are quite difficult to communicate.

It is useful to work on ways to break down complexmodels in component parts so that they can becommunicated more easily and so that early tangi-ble successes can be celebrated.

Clarity about what's fixed and what's flexible isessential.

There are specific capacities 'that need to be devel-

oped to improve the likelihood that efforts toimprove outcomes will begin well and succeedover time:

Work on governance structures tends to overwhelmwork on improving outcomes, and there is disagree-ment in the field about whether new structures areworth their cost in energy, resources and politicalcapital. It is clear that communities consider gover-nance issues more effectively after they have builttrust, established the strengths and weaknesses ofcurrent structures for achieving the specificimprovements in outcomes being soughbnddeveloped their strategies to improve child andfamily well-being. Capacity to deal with this issueis developed over time.

Successful efforts to improve outcomes for youngchildren and their families have political and/orcommunity champions. These champions havebeen the Mayor, Governor or key legislator and/orrespected business leaders.

Leadership development and capacity building at alllevels is needed to ensure effective participation ofa broad range of individuals.

There is a trade-off between inclusiveness and effi-ciency in collaborative efforts (long noted in the lit-erature). There are specific steps that communitiescan take to form and maintain inclusive efforts;absent these specific steps, efforts will tend toexclude those with different ideologies and theoriesof change. In addition, issues related to class, raceand gender may interfere with the work unless sur-faced and addressed.

Some activities previously considered as tangen-tial or separate engaging the public in supportof the behaviors that need to be changed toimprove outcomes; addressing institutionalracism; fostering and providing access to normal,positive child development activities and opportu-nities in communities need to be fully embed-ded within any efforts to improve outcomes foryoung children.

Efforts to engage the public are an essential pro-grammatic strategy to improve outcomes, but theyneed to be very carefully targeted and crafted.

We have tended to underplay the role of racism,and particularly, institutional racism, in the develop-ment of strategies to address children and familyoutcomes.

We tend to focus our efforts on improving poor out-comes, rather than on a higher standard of havingall children thrive; thus making the individual childand family the unit of intervention, not the commu-nity. A focus on poor outcomes also leads to reme-dial and targeted strategies rather than strategiesaimed at creating a community which supports highlevels of well-being and achievement of childrenand families. A different strategy showing promiseis to think more about normal child developmentand to build communities with the services, activi-ties and supports most likely to foster those positivegoals.

The non-profit sector provides myriad opportunitiesto support normal child development that are oftenoverlooked, or not thought about in a systemic way.

The process by which communities, foundations

and others (intermediaries, technical assistance

providers, evaluators) can most effectively worktogether is important. New forms of partnershipneed to be implemented.

Such partnerships entail more equitable relation-ships between funders, communities, intermediariesand states, as well as different relationships

3 2 between families and systems.

Copyright March 1997 by Center for Assessment and Policy Development. All rights reserved.



This work requires an understanding and apprecia-tion that inclusiveness and trust take time to createand maintain, that work will not proceed in a linearor smooth fashion, that improvement against inter-mediate markers is progress, and that there aresome things each community has to learn for itself.Timing and funding decisions should reflect thisreality.

At the same time, there is considerable resistance toaltering existing power relationships necessary tochange the status quo. Interim markers of progresscan be used to promote accountability and identifyand overcome resistance.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NEXT GENERATIONCOMMUNITY/FOUNDATION PARTNERSHIPS

Some of the lessons above have implications for

how communities might do their work:

Consider establishing positive goals (children thriv-ing, school readiness, normal child development)rather than goals tied solely to reduction of negativeoutcomes. These goals reduce stigma, set the stagefor universal efforts and draw in a broad range ofcommunity stakeholders beyond traditional serviceproviders and systems (for example, parents; neigh-borhoods; recreational, spiritual and educationalactivities and services; schools, etc.).

Consider establishing the community (rather thanindividual children and families) as the target ofintervention. This avoids blaming the victim, ithelps to establish a collective responsibility for chil-dren (and helps make their roles clear) and it setsthe stage for taking smaller efforts to scale.

Create and continue to refine a theory of changeabout the strategies, short-term and interim out-comes that are required to achieve the long-termoutcomes of interest. Use this as a tool to refinestrategies and develop benchmarks or markers ofprogress.

Do a careful analysis of the behaviors that need tobe changed to achieve short-term and interim out-comes, identify the groups who can make those

changes, and the communication and other strate-gies that influence their behavior. Target changeefforts (including public will efforts) based on theresults of this analysis.

Take advantage of available technical assistanceabout strategies to achieve outcomes.

Also take advantage of available technical assis-tance about group process, collaboration, conflictresolution and other process skills.

Take specific (and known) steps to build inclusivecollaborations.

Build on research and best practice, taking care toreplicate the features of efforts that contribute topositive outcomes. (Don't allow efforts to becomediluted and expect them to work.)

Negotiate benchmarks, and develop ways of meas-uring results and reporting progress, that help thecommunity hold itself accountable for making a dif-ference in the lives of children.

Many of the above lessons have implications for

funders. In addition to supporting the communi-ties' work in the areas noted above, foundationscan:

Be the glue that holds initiatives together acrosschanges in leadership, including changes in politicaladministrations. Given that efforts to improve out-comes for young children and families require long-term, sustained attention, foundations need to staywith them over the long haul, including throughpredictable periods of reduced or stalled activity.

Practice new forms of partnership with communities(go beyond rhetoric, especially in the tough deci-sions). Implement joint identification of problemsand joint problem-solving in decisions about initia-tive goals and processes. Negotiate benchmarksand be clear how they are tied to funding decisions.

Do the necessary internal work to know the rulesunder which an initiative will operate, and commu-nicate those rules clearly to communities.

3

Copyright March 1997 by Center for Assessment and Policy Development. All rights reserved.



Take special care not to communicate mixed mes-sages, in the guise of appearing to be flexible.

Build assessment in from the beginning. Thinkabout "authentic assessment" (analogous toauthentic assessment or portfolio assessment ofchildren in school).

Fund an effort that is worth doing, even if it does notlend itself to easy evaluation, for example, in the caseof community saturation models.

Be sure to make race and racism an explicit part ofthe diagnosis of poor outcomes or failure to achievemore positive outcomes, and consider racism(including institutional racism) in developing strate-gies.

Provide resources and expertise that allow commu-nities to implement effective public will strategiesbased on results of analysis of behaviors tochange.

CAPD has incorporated many of these lessons into

its work. Ways that CAPD and other planning,intermediary, evaluation organizations mightchange our work include:

Temper prescriptiveness. Where prescriptiveness isjustified, based on research and analysis, make surewe are absolutely clear that guidelines are a frame-work to be modified locally.

Implement a new form of partnership not just inplanning and design work, but in evaluation. Focus

evaluation on strengthening the success of an initia-tive, through joint work on articulating theories ofchange, establishing benchmarks, providing practi-cal and timely feedback, and establishing trackingand assessment systems that support management,public will activities as well as evaluation.

Spend more time up front with all of the partiesclarifying the roles of the partners (communities,foundations, CAPD) and the exact nature of the part-nership.

Spend more time up front with foundations helpingthem articulate expected outcomes for an initiative,setting realistic expectations and establishing what'sfixed and what's flexible.

Spend more time with communities and founda-tions on how to implement a broad vision while stillpaying sufficient attention to the quality of interac-tions between children and those who influencetheir development.

Make more use of joint development of theories ofchange to clarify: the relationship between strate-gies and intended results; assess sufficiency of pro-posed strategies; identify appropriate interim mark-ers of progress; and support communication.

Take a community's lead more in TA, paying moreattention to providing practical, specific and timelyadvice (consistent with lessons above).

Share with communities lessons from a variety ofexperiences that can inform their work (draw notonly from early childhood efforts, but relevant workrelated to leadership development, anti-racism andpublic will work and from work to establish assess-ment and tracking systems to monitor communityand individual well-being).

Continue to refine how we do our work, includinghow we approach planning, implementation andevaluation from a partnership perspective.

3 4

© Copyright March 1997 by Center for Assessment and Policy Development. All rights reserved.

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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 431 857 Stephens, S. A.; Wolf, Wendy C ... · DOCUMENT RESUME. ED 431 857 UD 033 023. AUTHOR Stephens, S. A.; Wolf, Wendy C.; Batten, Susan T. TITLE Improving Outcomes