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The Family Growth Center (FGC) is a comprehensive,
community-based family support program designed to
reduce repeat pregnancy and school drop-out rates
among adolescent mothers. The program aims to provide
teen mothers in high-risk neighborhoods with a
comprehensive set of educational and support services,
offered within family and neighborhood contexts.
Young women are recruited for the program by perinatal
counselors/coaches when they arrive at participating
hospital clinics for prenatal visits. Thereafter, they
are offered a range of intervention components,
coordinated by FGC Case Managers. Program components
include home visits, crisis intervention, bimonthly
parenting classes, supervised daycare, transportation
services, recreational opportunities, and advocacy and
referral services. The evaluated FGC Pilot Program
took place in several of Pittsburgh's high-risk urban
neighborhoods. Of the 88 first-time mothers recruited
for the study, 49 were assigned to the intervention
group and 39 to the control group. An attrition group
was formed to follow the 25 women (15 intervention, 10
control) who dropped out of the program. Protocol
assessment measures were diverse and included
interview and questionnaire data and psychosocial and
behavioral outcomes of mothers and their children.
Researchers found that the proportion of the
intervention group mothers who dropped out of school
(3/34) was significantly less than the proportion of
the control group (12/29), a pattern which held at
both Time 1 (two years after recruitment) and Time 2
(three years after recruitment) analysis points.
Significant differences were also found in the
frequency of repeat pregnancies between the two
groups. At Time 1, three repeat pregnancies occurred
in the intervention group (less than 10%) versus 11
repeat pregnancies (38%) in the control group
(p=0.006). The Time 2 pattern was the same, with a
total of 7 repeat pregnancies among the intervention
group and 21 within the control group (p=0.020).
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