Teenage Pregnancy Research Report - 3p Consulting

Good Practice Principles of parenting supportTheir primary focus on improving the relationshipbetween parents and children, and helping parents toparent betterActive support of parenting from pregnancy throughtoddlerhood and beyond, and often including at leastone evidence-based program.Use of very clear models or theoretical approachesthat clearly informed the way in which all staff within thecentre worked with parents to achieve changeModeling of good relationships with both parentsand children; and the skills and insight of staff,who delivered the programs effectively through acombination of training, supervision and experience.Characteristics of evidence based parentingprogramsProvided by early years practitioners (or volunteers)who have received additional training and who getongoing support while delivering programs.Aimed at encouraging new ways of parenting orchanging established ways of parenting.Involve the use of specific methods of intervention withparents, and may use specific techniques to enableparents to parent differentlyAre goal-driven, with specified objectives to beachieved during the intervention and specific tasks tobe undertaken.Based in theory and often guided by the use of amanual.Evidence suggests that the effectiveness of parenting and support programs for teenage parents and their childrenis dependent on the expected outcomes. 16 Home visiting and community based programs have been shown to havethe most impact, both in the short and long term. While this includes improved parent/child relationships there is nosignificant effect on parenting stress, mental health or social inclusiveness for the teen parent or on improvements onchild developmental outcomes.The key message from the literature is that the incidence of teenage pregnancy and therefore teenage parenting isstrongly linked to the quality of experiences young people themselves had through their own childhood. The needto provide support services that take into account the broader socio-economic and developmental status of youngparents is essential in conjunction with longevity of program funding to ensure continuity of practice.80