Second Chance Homes: Providing Services for Teenage Parents and Their Children

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Second Chance Homes: Providing Services for Teenage Parents and Their Children

The age and circumstances of teenage mothers who could be in need of a Second Chance Home "slot" present major challenges to service delivery. Indeed, more often than not, minor parents who are not able to live with their parents cannot do so due to violence in the home, physical abuse, or unsafe living conditions. These circumstances suggest that the service needs of some of these mothers are greater than the service needs of other teen mothers. Providing services in a residence requires individualized attention and trained committed staff. The following are some of the challenges to effective service delivery based upon both the characteristics of the service recipients and the nature of the services themselves.

Differing Levels of Need. Part of the intrinsic appeal of Second Chance Homes is the ability to offer tailored services to the individual, with direct knowledge of the services needed. For instance, the primary service needs of some teens may be a stable living environment, education or employment, while others may have multiple needs related to histories of physical and sexual abuse, domestic violence, and long-term poverty. Experiences from Massachusetts suggest that it is best to offer a range of services, with the ability to tailor services to each individual. Given that there is variation in the service needs of teenage mothers, programs either have to be very flexible and comprehensive in nature or there will be both unmet needs and misused resources. It may be more harmful than beneficial to assume that all young mothers need the same core set of services.

Need for Structured Environment. The design of some programs already in existence is quite structured and in many instances restrictive. This stems from a belief among program operators that in order to really help young mothers and enforce behavioral change, they need lots of structure and opportunities to learn all of the skills that are intended to help them improve their parenting and be able to provide for their children. Often this very prescriptive orientation means that nearly every hour is accounted for with participation in some form of activity, leaving little or no free time. As a result, some mothers may be reluctant to stay and forfeit some of their freedoms.

Evidence from Massachusetts indicates that some mothers dropped out due to the severity of the rules and regulations. Some mothers chose not to remain in a Second Chance Home for other reasons: they missed their families; they succumbed to pressure from their boyfriends; or some had persistent drug or alcohol problems that were in violation of house rules, which meant that they could not remain in residence and had to seek treatment (if they chose to) elsewhere. The average length of stay in some of these homes is 6 months, making the provision of long-term services very difficult.

Some homes have experienced success with a service model that begins with a highly structured environment, but offers teens more autonomy and flexibility as they progress through the program. For instance, in the Second Chance Homes in Rhode Island, teens begin by living in a highly structured group home with 24-hour supervision. As they make progress in school and improve their parenting skills, they move into a shared apartment situation with 16-hour supervision. In the last stage of the program, as teens prepare for independent living, they move into individual apartments and a case manager provides guidance and supervision for eight hours each day.

Coordination of Services. Many Second Chance Homes are intended to be comprehensive in nature, necessitating interactions with many different types of agencies. Deciding which agency has overall responsibility for coordinating services for participating teenage parents needs to be done up front, as this influences the overall program orientation and functioning.

Quality of service may be contingent upon program staff. Service delivery and overall program success will likely be contingent upon the individuals who are running the program and delivering services. It takes a tremendous amount of patience and commitment on the part of program staff when dealing with many of the issues that are facing resident teens and their young children. Recruitment, training and retention of staff are issues that need to be given careful consideration.

Need for community support. Many of the characteristics of a model Second Chance Home (committed staff, comprehensive services, highly structured environment) suggest that the program design and service delivery must be highly responsive to the needs of the community, and specifically the young women who are in need. The infrastructure and public support for these homes need to be in place in order for a program to be sustained.

There have been several process analyses of Second Chance Homes describing the service delivery approaches specific to individual programs as well as the number and characteristics of teens served by the programs. Several of these evaluations have provided considerable insight into the needs of young mothers and their children, and have offered good suggestions on what the next direction should be in terms of defining or refining programs serving young mothers and their children. In addition to documenting how programs operate and offering descriptive information about teens and their children, in some cases the studies also include documentation of outcomes (e.g. employment, education or pregnancy) that were measured by the programs.

To date, there is very limited rigorous evaluative information on the effectiveness of Second Chance Homes. Several states or programs have reported successful results in terms of reduced repeat pregnancies (compared with the state average), higher rates of school completion, lower child abuse and neglect, improved maternal and child health, higher participation in employment, and reduced welfare dependency. However, use of these results to make informed policy or program design decisions is limited because: 1) the results have typically been based on self-reported information from participants (not independently verified); 2) the information is based on a very small number of young mothers; and 3) the information reflects only the outcomes of those who stayed with the programs or were able to be tracked after leaving. Further, in almost all cases, there has been no comparable group with which to compare outcomes in order to determine whether the participation in a Second Chance Home made a real difference compared to what would have otherwise happened.

Massachusetts, with perhaps the most established network of Second Chance Homes, operates 21 homes across the state. Data collected by the Department of Transitional Living Programs in Massachusetts indicate that there were fewer pregnancies among teens in Second Chance Homes than the statewide average. While this finding is encouraging, it is descriptive and suffers from the lack of comparison with a comparable group- one with similar circumstances or motivation.

The need for evaluation is being recognized as a key component in new program design. For instance, in one design document for Second Chance Homes, it is suggested that any new program build evaluation activities, such as tracking outcomes of participants, into the everyday operations. In addition to informing program operators and funders of the overall success of the program in achieving the intended outcomes, this kind of process evaluation evidence can be very useful in informing others who are interested in starting or redesigning a Second Chance Home about policy issues and operational lessons. While serving a useful purpose, there are several limitations to this information, however, in terms of assessing program effectiveness.

As more programs seek to conduct rigorous program evaluations, there are several key issues and challenges to consider. These include:

Program size and capacity. The majority of existing Second Chance Homes are residential in nature, accommodating small numbers of teenage mothers and their children (often 6 or 8 teen mothers at one time). This structure is often conducive to the program setting and service delivery, but it makes any kind of rigorous impact evaluation more difficult due to the smaller sample sizes.

Measurements. Second Chance Homes offer the opportunity to address a variety of issues that can effect outcomes for both the mother and child. Some of the outcomes are easily quantified, such as the attainment of a high school diploma or GED. Others, such as parenting skills or increased self-esteem, are more difficult to measure and the anticipated impact may not surface for extended periods of time.

Comparison. A rigorous impact evaluation requires the comparison of two groups that are otherwise comparable except for participation in a Second Chance Home. Ideally, the strongest and most defensible comparison is between two groups that have been selected at random to either receive program services or not. Neither program operators nor researchers would support the denial of services to teens and their children for purely research purposes. However, often where there is more demand for service than capacity to serve, applicants can be randomly selected into the program as space allows. Those not selected can be included in the study to compare outcomes.

Additionally, the nature of the program makes it difficult to definitively answer questions on program effectiveness without the ability to construct a comparison group that takes into account not only socio-demographic characteristics, but also such traits as motivation, willingness to comply with authority, or emotional/mental health status.

Follow-up and tracking. Many of the key outcomes that Second Chance Homes aim to improve can only be measured after an extended period of time. For instance, while the attainment of a high school diploma could be achieved in a relatively short time frame, there are some program impacts that may not surface for quite some time. Many of the positive outcomes, such as long-term employment, increased subsequent earnings and self-sufficiency, and some of the child development outcomes do not surface immediately. Moreover, measuring program effectiveness is complicated by the difficulty in determining how much of the change in outcome is attributable to the intervention, when the average length of stay is less than one year. Many of the evaluations have collected data on teens who were in the program, but have had more difficulty tracking teens who have left the program.

Conclusion

Second Chance Homes can "...provide teenage moms and their babies with an environment that is safe, supportive, and supervised." Second Chance Homes can provide access to child care, education, job training, counseling and parenting instruction—helping teen parents to take responsibility for their lives and for their children’s futures. Determining how funds can be used for the purposes of establishing a Second Chance Home requires coordination and very clear goals for both the program and the community/setting. It also requires information sharing, technical assistance and guidance, documentation, and attention to evaluation design to ensure that there is accurate and reliable information on program characteristics and outcomes for teens and their children, and, where possible, rigorous evaluation to assess program effectiveness.