全球智库信息集成服务系统

Key Findings:

• Steps to Success in San Angelo, Texas was designed to address repeat pregnancy among adolescent mothers by supplementing a traditional home visiting model with counseling on contraception and adequate birth spacing, as well as education and career planning. Steps to Success offers weekly visits with families for a longer period than the traditional program, as well as places a high-priority on engaging fathers in home visits as appropriate.
• The participant population was primarily adolescent mothers who were Hispanic, English Speaking, 18 or older, and in a romantic relationship with the baby’s father at program entry. Forty-three percent of participants were pregnant; the rest were recruited within a few months of the birth of their baby. Poverty and limited social support networks were common among participants.
• Steps to Success provided substantially more support than the traditional home visiting program offered to the control group, 20 versus 12 home visits, on average, during families’ their first year in the program. Steps to Success also engaged more fathers in home visits than the traditional home visiting program did. Steps to Success visits covered employment, career planning, contraception, and adequate birth spacing, topics that were not covered in the traditional program.