Pregnant & Parenting Foster Youth: The Need for Prevention & Life Skills
~ By Jasmine Rose
During Foster Care Month, I wrote a blog post about my experiences working in a group foster care home. Afterwards, my colleague shared a new report that had just come out – The Midwest Evaluation of the Adult Functioning of Former Foster Youth: Outcomes at Ages 23 and 24 . This report is based on the largest, most recent, longitudinal study of young people aging out of foster care and transitioning to adulthood. With approximately 29,500 foster youth aging out of foster care a year, this report highlights the many obstacles they come across at this juncture. A large proportion of the young people in this study (nearly 40%) find themselves homeless or couch surfing, and those that are working (fewer than half) are not earning a living wage.
As I read this report, I was baffled by the number of foster care youth that had not received family planning services in the last year (only 9% of females and 3% of males had received this type of instruction). Considering that by age 23 or 24 more than three-quarters of the young women in this study had been pregnant (two-thirds of those having were an unplanned pregnancy), and almost half of the young men had at least one child, this seems like an obvious problem. At the same time, despite the fact that all these young people had been removed from their homes and placed in foster care, the participants were still most likely to identify their biological mom as a source of information about parenting and as someone who taught them how to be a good parent (Courtney, Dworsky, Lee, & Rapp, 2010).
I was most grateful to get the opportunity to interview Amy Dworsky, who was one of the authors of this report. Amy is a senior researcher at Chapin Hall and an author for The Prevention Researcher. Her research includes youth aging out of foster care, the educational trajectories of homeless youth, pregnant and parenting foster youth, and the service needs of low-income families in Chicago.
Q: Amy, when I read your recent report, I was struck by the fact that so many foster youth were not receiving any family planning services or instruction, despite the fact that such a large percentage of foster youth became parents during your longitudinal study. Are there programs out there that are addressing this need as part of the independent living skills instruction (along with budgeting, employment, and housing)?
Unfortunately, most state child welfare agencies don’t have a formal strategy to prevent teenage pregnancy among youth in foster care. In fact, the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions Act of 2008, the most recent major federal child welfare legislation, includes several provisions related to older foster youth but says nothing about pregnancy or parenthood among teens in foster care.
That said, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has been working to raise awareness about the high rate of teenage pregnancy among youth in foster care and to promote pregnancy prevention efforts by state child welfare agencies and other organizations. In April 2009, The National Campaign convened a roundtable with representatives from eight states (Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Virginia) to share ideas about preventing youth in foster care from becoming pregnant. Each of the participating states developed a strategic plan which they will implement with technical assistance from The National Campaign. The National Campaign has also produced a video (A Crucial Connection) and other educational materials (e.g., Our Story, Our Words: Youth Speak Out on Sex, Love, and Teen Pregnancy and 10 Tips for Foster Parents to Help Their Foster Youth Avoid Teen Pregnancy) for foster youth, caregivers, and child welfare professionals. Here in Illinois, the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) formed a Pregnancy Prevention Workgroup, of which I am a member. This group began meeting in August 2009 and includes DCFS administrative staff, as well as representatives from Planned Parenthood of Illinois, Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health, CASA of Cook County, Jane Addams Juvenile Court Foundation, the Uhlich Children’s Action Network (UCAN) Foster Care Pregnancy Prevention Taskforce, Cook County Court Child Protection Division and the Illinois Department of Public Health. We have developed a set of policy and practice recommendations aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy among youth in the Department’s care.
I should also note that only one pregnancy prevention curriculum has been developed specifically for youth in foster care―Power Through Choices (PTC). PTC is designed to help foster youth make healthy choices related to sexual behavior, contraception and risk reduction; develop communication skills; and use local resources to prevent pregnancy, HIV and other STIs. PTC’s impact on foster youth behavior has yet to be evaluated, and the curriculum is currently being revised by the University of Oklahoma’s National Resource Center for Youth Services (NRCYS).
Q: In your report, some of the participants said they wished some of the independent living skills would have been taught, or started at a younger age. What do you think would be an appropriate age to start independent living skills? Do you agree that family planning needs to be part of those skills that are reviewed?
Amy: The simple answer is the sooner, the better. It is never too early to start teaching youth life skills. Parents do it all the time, albeit on informal basis. Family planning should certainly be part of any life skills training, although I would frame it a bit differently. Foster youth ages 12 and older should be educated about sexual health, which is broadly defined to include information about preventing pregnancy, STIs and HIV/AIDS. They should also be given access to reproductive health care services, birth control and condoms, and confidential screenings. Group homes, residential treatment facilities, and transitional or independent living programs should be required to implement age-appropriate pregnancy prevention curriculum. Equally important, child welfare agencies should require foster parents and caseworkers to complete pregnancy prevention training.
Q: Are former foster youth more likely to have children that also end up in the foster care system?
Amy: We know that early childbearing is associated with a number of adverse consequences for both teen mothers and their children. Children whose mothers were teens when their first child was born are at increased risk of being neglected or abused. This risk may be even higher among children of teenage parents who are or were in foster care. In Fiscal Year 2009, the Teenage Parenting Services Network (TPSN), which works exclusively with pregnant and parenting foster youth in the Chicago metropolitan area, provided services to a total of 783 parenting foster youth as well as 116 of their children who had also been become wards. This is consistent with what I found when I analyzed the TPSN administrative data. Twenty-two percent of young mothers served by TPSN over an 8 year period were investigated for child abuse or neglect and 44 percent of the young mothers who were investigated had at least one indicated report. Equally troubling, approximately 10 percent of the young mothers’ children become state wards. Although some of the children’s placements were very short-term, others had not achieved permanency even after 2 years.
Q: I was very glad to read that you have the opportunity to follow these young people from your report for another two years. What other types of things do you hope to look at with this additional data?
Amy: We will continue to look at many of the same outcomes we have been tracking since these young people were in their late teens, such as employment, educational attainment, and housing stability. We will also continue to study their experiences with parenthood and have added a series of questions related to the development and well-being of their children.
I’d like to thank Amy Dworsky, who took the time to answer these questions about foster care youth, and for her continued research on this topic that touches the lives of so many.
