The Title XX Adolescent Family life Program

Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs (OAPP)

Care Demonstration Projects

Care demonstration projects develop and test methods of serving pregnant adolescents, adolescent parents, their infants, adolescent fathers, long-term male partners and families. Each of these projects proposes and implements innovative and comprehensive health, education and social services, either directly or through partnerships with other community agencies. AFL Care projects are unique in their services to pregnant adolescents, adolescent parents and their families. Because of the demonstrative nature of these grants, projects are able to implement exciting new program strategies that stretch beyond traditional case management approaches. These new approaches are independently evaluated for five years.

Each Care demonstration project is unique. Although the Title XX legislation stipulates that specific core services must be offered either directly or by referral by each grantee, models for implementation of these services vary. Each grantee is required to implement an innovative approach to providing needed services to this population. Care services are offered through a variety of grantee organizations, from school districts to hospitals to community-based organizations to local clinics.

The ultimate goal of Care demonstration projects is to develop and test interventions with pregnant and parenting teens in an effort to ameliorate the negative effects of too-early-childbearing on teen parents, their babies and their families.With this aim in mind, all Care projects attempt to reduce the number of repeat teen pregnancies, improve infant immunization and increase the educational attainment of clients. Grantees also focus on increasing the positive factors related to good pregnancy outcomes, self-sufficiency, and parenting, and provide a variety of services to teen parents, their children and their families. Projects are able to improve parenting skills, provide mental health services, increase infant immunization rates, improve educational attainment rates, and build positive support systems for pregnant and parenting adolescents and their children.

Care demonstration projects also include independent evaluations. The evaluation component is designed to test the effectiveness of the innovative project. Each project works directly with an independent evaluator to design and implement an evaluation that will address issues relevant to the field of adolescent pregnancy.The evaluation is an integral part of the demonstration project.

Department of Health and Human Services . Office of Public Health and Science
Tower Building . Suite 700 . 1101 Wootton Parkway . Rockville, MD 20852
PHONE (240) 453-2828 . FAX (240) 453-2829 . opa.osophs.dhhs.gov