New Chance: Final Report on a Comprehensive Program for Young Mothers in Poverty and Their Children

摘要

This report extends the story to 42 months of follow-up. The young mothers are now 22 years old, on average, and their children range from infancy to schoolage. The report addresses the question of whether the 18-month effects have translated into gains in employment, reductions in time on welfare, and improved outcomes for the children of program participants. On many of these measures, the outcomes for the mothers have improved since they enrolled in New Chance. The sobering news is that the absolute levels of progress leave these young families far from self-sufficiency, and for most outcomes the New Chance program did not improve progress over and above that shown by an equivalent group of young women who did not attend New Chance. Furthermore, the New Chance experience has created some unplanned, small, but troubling effects for some of the most fragile families in the study. For example, mothers at high risk of clinical depression at the outset were, at follow-up, at greater risk of depression and reported higher levels of parental stress than their counterparts in the control group. They also believed that their children were doing less well on measures of social behavior. Taken together with the results from studies of other approaches to improving the lives of young, poor mothers who are dropouts, these results speak to the importance of developing earlier interventions that succeed in preventing the constellation of poverty, academic failure, and nonmarital teen births. They also speak to the continued progress, striving, and tenacity of the young families, and their need for support as they struggle.