Contact Name
Barbara Dietsch
562-985-9488

Contact Email
bdietsc@WestEd.org

Cynthia Diehm, M.A.
Steve Yoder, B.A.
National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth

Adolescent pregnancy prevention continues to be near the top of the national agenda today. Yet the focus of pregnancy prevention efforts far too often has been young people rather than communities. Given the realities facing many youth, the challenge is to develop comprehensive strategies that involve entire communities in removing the institutional roadblocks and making the systemic changes required to enable young people to make healthy choices regarding sexual activity. Creating such strategies requires focusing on adolescent sexual development in the context of young people's overall development. This is exactly the approach promoted by the Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and its local grantee youth agencies for more than two decades. The experience of FYSB and its grantees has shown that offering youth the services and opportunities they need to acquire skills, define their places in the community, and take control over their futures is the best approach to preventing undesirable outcomes and, more important, giving them hope for the future. Through these experiences, in fact, youth develop a sense of competence, a sense of usefulness, a sense of belonging, and a sense of power.

Providing youth with each of these elements is at the core of FYSB's youth development approach. In turn, that approach is integral to all of FYSB's programs, especially the Transitional Living Program for Older Homeless Youth (TLP). Through the TLP, FYSB currently funds 75 communities nationwide to provide residential services for up to 18 months (the maximum period allowed by legislative mandate) to older youth ages 16 - 21 who are homeless or unable to return home. Since 1990, local TLPs have offered young people without homes the services and opportunities they need to learn to live independently. The TLPs build on young people's strengths through services designed around the components of FYSB's youth development model:

A sense of competence: TLPs provide young people with a dynamic learning environment that includes both classroom-based activities and practical experiences. All TLP participants are required to engage in academic and/or work activities. To complement those experiences, TLPs offer youth life skills training in areas critical to living independently, such as budgeting, relationship skills, and job preparation and attainment. As part of life skills training, TLPs generally also offer sexuality education and parenting skills activities.

Most TLPs also use a phase system under which young people gradually move from a highly structured environment (such as living in a supervised group home) to one in which they are expected to live more independently (for example, an individual off-site apartment rented by the young person with the sponsorship of the TLP). As part of supporting youth in moving toward greater autonomy, many TLPs offer them opportunities to gain a realistic picture of a range of life circumstances, including adolescent parenthood. Programs do so by, for example, intentionally housing nonparenting and parenting youth in the same residences, facilitating group discussions about adolescent parenting led by young mothers, and having youth participate in the "Baby Think It Over" pregnancy prevention program, in which youth carry a lifelike baby doll, programmed to cry at various intervals, for at least 24 hours.

A sense of usefulness: TLPs help young people gain a sense of usefulness by giving them the opportunity to learn what it means to be a good neighbor and become involved in their communities. TLPs require participants to get to know their neighbors, contribute to community activities such as neighborhood cleanups, respect neighbors' privacy, and adhere to neighborhood norms regarding issues such as noise and property upkeep.

Many TLPs also encourage or require youth to participate in community service activities. In many instances, those opportunities reinforce the messages youth learn through the TLP regarding pregnancy prevention and reproductive health. One agency, for example, has TLP participants who express interest in having a baby do volunteer work at a local day care center so that they learn what it takes to care for infants and children.

A sense of belonging: TLPs link youth with circles of support that provide them with meaningful relationships both during and after their TLP experience. TLPs, for example, have strong peer and adult mentoring programs. These allow participants to form relationships with other young people and adults who can offer support and guidance, such as on addressing reproductive health and pregnancy issues.

In addition, many TLPs allow youth to remain in their TLP-sponsored apartments upon graduating from the program. Present and former TLP participants, therefore, are able to live in the same complexes, which provides both groups a sense of continuity and peer support. That arrangement also allows TLP staff to maintain contact with former TLP participants since they regularly visit current participants. TLP graduates, therefore, have access to ongoing staff support in addressing issues they confront, including sexuality issues.

A sense of power: TLPs provide youth with the chance to experience responsibility by having them participate in enhancing TLP operations and be involved in planning their own futures. TLPs involve youth in real leadership experiences by having youth representatives participate in staff meetings, program development discussions, and interviews of prospective staff. Programs also employ an intake process through which staff meet with youth individually to help them set goals for their period of residence in the TLP and for the future, including deciding on a pregnancy prevention plan. For many young people, this is the first chance they have had to consider their own sexual development within the context of their plans for the future. There is growing awareness that dealing with public health issues such as adolescent pregnancy requires a comprehensive approach that begins at the community level. FYSB's youth development approach to adolescent pregnancy prevention offers communities a basis for designing a continuum of care that provides all youth the range of supports and opportunities they need to grow and thrive.

For more information on FYSB's youth development approach to adolescent pregnancy prevention, call or write the National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth, (301) 608-8098, E-mail: , Internet: .