"I hadn't a penny": A review of State Income Supports Available to Young Parents

As Minister for Children, I am pleased to publish this paper which provides an overview of the income supports available for young parents. This paper has been commissioned as part of the evaluation of the Teenage Parents Support Initiative (TPSI) funded by the Department of Health and Children.The objective of this paper is to discuss the degree to which existing provision within the Irish welfare system meets the financial support needs of teenage parents, in particular, the level to which it meets the needs of different subgroups within the overall population of teenage parents. Download document here

The Invisible Students : Young Parents in Education

As Minister for Children, I am pleased to publish this paper on young parents and education disadvantage, which has been commissioned as part of the evaluation of the Teenage Parents Support Initiative (TPSI). The aim of this paper is to identify and discuss key aspects of the policy landscape in relation to young parentsâ?T participation in education and to inform the work of the TPSI pilot projects. For all young people, education and training offers a possible route out of poverty, social exclusion and isolation. Research suggests that teenage parents represent a particularly vulnerable group within the education system and that difficulties in continuing formal education and in accessing relevant training opportunities are significant issues for young parents and their children. Download document here

Final report to the Illinois General Assembly : addressing the educational and related needs of children and youths who are parents, expectant parents, or survivors of domestic or sexual violence to ensure their ability to stay in school, stay safe, and successfully complete their education.

"June 2010."

Report to the General Assembly on Programs for Teen Parents /

"February 1, 1995."

Self-evaluation manual for adolescent pregnancy projects.

Cover title.

You’re the COACH!: A Guide for Parents of New Drivers, June 23, 2008

This publication is a guide for parents and guardians of teenagers learning to drive. It should be used with the Iowa Driver’s Manual to aid you in instructing your new driver about how to safely and responsibly operate a motor vehicle. Since the task of driving is affected by changing conditions, this manual does not attempt to cover all situations that may arise. Under Iowa’s graduated driver licensing system young drivers must complete 20 hours of supervised drive time with their parents or guardians during the instruction permit stage and 10 hours during the intermediate license stage. Even though your teenager is taking or has completed driver education in school, there is a great deal of benefit to be obtained from you providing this additional practice time. Learning from your experience and under your guidance, your teenager will apply the rules of the road and more fully understand the risks involved in driving. This will require time and patience on your part, but the effort will result in you knowing that your teenager will be better able to cope with the demands of safe driving. In the back of this manual you will find several pages of diagrams. Use these diagrams to illustrate different driving situations for your teenage driver. Consider taking a notepad and pencil along during your practice sessions for additional drawings. This manual also contains a chart to log your supervised drive time. As your new driver advances through the graduated system you will be required to certify to an Iowa driver’s license examiner that you completed the minimum number of hours of supervised drive time. By becoming involved in the learning driver’s educational process, you are contributing to Iowa’s overall highway safety effort and helping your teenager develop safe driving habits that will last a lifetime.

"Tu seras Psychologue, ma fille". La transmission intergénérationnelle du choix professionnel : Une co-construction entre parents et enfants.

The aim of the study is to understand how the family influences the choice of becoming a psychologist and how an occupational choice is repeated in the family, via intergenerational transmission. We interviewed seven female students in a Master of Science in Psychology : first, they filled in a genosociogramm including data about occupations of their ancestors on about four generations ; then, they took part into a semi-structured qualitative enquiry. Our results have shown that a little bit less than half of the subjects have a parent who have social or care jobs, but more than half if we add the grand-parents. In a conscious level, subjects tend to deny any kind of family influence, in the majority ; afterwards, they discover influences they didn't notice. Secondly, the content analysis reveals five categories of family influence : the educational path (doubts, choices), the choice of psychology via the development of self-efficacy (interest, personality and soft skills), the exploration of occupations and activities during childhood and adulthood (leisure activities, professional world, suggestions, advice, education), the transmission of values (immaterial and material) and the family relationships during childhood and teenage years (relationship issues and difficulties, confidences and secrets, relationships and role in the brotherhood and/or sisterhood). The importance for the career counselor to investigate the relational context of his/her consultant is discussed, as much as the need for him to think about his own motivations to help others, linked with his family background.

Pratiques éducatives des parents d’adolescents présentant un TDAH : perception des parents et des adolescents en lien avec les comportements à risque

La présente étude vise à examiner d’une part le lien entre les pratiques éducatives rapportées par la mère et celles perçues par son adolescent ayant un trouble déficitaire de l’attention avec ou sans hyperactivité (TDAH) et examiner le lien avec l’adoption de comportements à risque chez l’adolescent (délinquance et association aux pairs déviants). Cinq pratiques éducatives ont été étudiées de manière distincte, soit l’engagement parental, les pratiques positives, la discipline inconstante, la faible supervision ainsi que la punition corporelle. Chacune d’entre elles a été mesurée par la mère, son adolescent et une variable de désaccord a ensuite été créée. L’échantillon est composé de 32 dyades mère-adolescent ayant participé cinq ans auparavant au programme Ces Années Incroyables. Les adolescents ont tous un diagnostic de TDAH et sont âgés entre 10 ans et 15 ans. Les résultats démontrent une absence de corrélation entre chacune des pratiques éducatives rapportées par la mère et celles perçues par l’adolescent. La mère tend à avoir une perception plus positive des pratiques éducatives que son adolescent. Les résultats démontrent aussi que la perception de l’adolescent sur les pratiques éducatives est associée à la compréhension des comportements à risque. Finalement, la perception de l’adolescent s’est avérée être un facteur aggravant de la relation entre l’ampleur du désaccord mère adolescent et l’association aux pairs déviants. La discussion explique ces résultats et aborde les importantes implications cliniques.

Management and program audit of the Parents Too Soon Program.

"August 1990."

Breaking down barriers:teenage girls’ perceptions of engineering as a study and career choice

Background: Stereotypically perceived to be an ‘all male’ occupation, engineering has for many years failed to attract high numbers of young women [1,2]. The reasons for this are varied, but tend to focus on misconceptions of the profession as being more suitable for men. In seeking to investigate this issue a participatory research approach was adopted [3] in which two 17 year-old female high school students interviewed twenty high school girls. Questions focused on the girls’ perceptions of engineering as a study and career choice. The findings were recorded and analysed using qualitative techniques. The study identified three distinctive ‘influences’ as being pivotal to girls’ perceptions of engineering; pedagogical; social; and, familial. Pedagogical Influences: Pedagogical influences tended to focus on science and maths. In discussing science, the majority of the girls identified biology and chemistry as more ‘realistic’ whilst physics was perceived to more suitable for boys. The personality of the teacher, and how a particular subject is taught, proved to be important influences shaping opinions. Social Influences: Societal influences were reflected in the girls’ career choice with the majority considering medical or social science related careers. Although all of the girls believed engineering to be ‘male dominated’, none believed that a woman should not be engineer. Familial Influences: Parental influence was identified as key to career and study choice; only two of the girls had discussed engineering with their parents of which only one was being actively encouraged to pursue a career in engineering. Discussion: The study found that one of the most significant barriers to engineering is a lack of awareness. Engineering did not register in the girls’ lives, it was not taught in school, and only one had met a female engineer. Building on the study findings, the discussion considers how engineering could be made more attractive to young women. Whilst misconceptions about what an engineer is need to be addressed, other more fundamental pedagogical barriers, such as the need to make physics more attractive to girls and the need to develop the curriculum so as to meet the learning needs of 21st Century students are discussed. By drawing attention to the issues around gender and the barriers to engineering, this paper contributes to current debates in this area – in doing so it provides food for thought about policy and practice in engineering and engineering education.

Recruiting faith and non-faith based schools, adolescents and parents to a cluster randomised sexual-health trial: experiences, challenges and lessons from the mixed-methods Jack Feasibility Trial

Background: The move toward evidence-based education has led to increasing numbers of randomised trials in schools. However, the literature on recruitment to non-clinical trials is relatively underdeveloped, when compared to that of clinical trials. Recruitment to school-based randomised trials is, however, challenging; even more so when the focus of the study is a sensitive issue such as sexual health. This article reflects on the challenges of recruiting post-primary schools, adolescent pupils and parents to a cluster randomised feasibility trial of a sexual health intervention, and the strategies employed to address them.
Methods: The Jack Trial was funded by the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). It comprised a feasibility study of an interactive film-based sexual health intervention entitled If I Were Jack, recruiting over 800 adolescents from eight socio-demographically diverse post-primary schools in Northern Ireland. It aimed to determine the facilitators and barriers to recruitment and retention to a school-based sexual health trial and identify optimal multi-level strategies for an effectiveness study. As part of an embedded process evaluation, we conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with principals, vice-principals, teachers, pupils and parents recruited to the study as well as classroom observations and a parents’ survey.
Results: With reference to Social Learning Theory, we identified a number of individual, behavioural and environmental level factors which influenced recruitment. Commonly identified facilitators included perceptions of the relevance and potential benefit of the intervention to adolescents, the credibility of the organisation and individuals running the study, support offered by trial staff, and financial incentives. Key barriers were prior commitment to other research, lack of time and resources, and perceptions that the intervention was incompatible with pupil or parent needs or the school ethos.
Conclusions: Reflecting on the methodological challenges of recruiting to a school-based sexual health feasibility trial, this study highlights pertinent general and trial-specific facilitators and barriers to recruitment, which will prove useful for future trials with schools, adolescent pupils and parents.

Identification of family variables in parents' groups of children with epilepsy

OBJECTIVE: To verify the effectiveness of the support group in the identification of family variables linked to epilepsy. METHOD: Pre-test were applied to parents of 21 children with benign epilepsy of childhood recently diagnosed, from 5 to 15 years, who participated in the groups at HC/Unicamp. There was a presentation of an educational video, discussion and application of the post-test 1. After six months, the post-test 2 was applied. RESULTS: The beliefs were: fear of swallowing the tongue during the seizures (76.19%) and of a future mental disease (66.67%). Facing the epilepsy, fear and sadness appeared. 76.19% of the parents presented overprotection and 90.48%, expected a new seizure. In the post-test 1, the parents affirmed that the information offered had modified the beliefs. In the post-test 2, 80.95% didn't report great doubts about epilepsy and 90.48% considered their relationship with their children better. CONCLUSIONS: The demystification of beliefs supplied from the groups influenced the family positively, prevented behavior alterations and guaranteed effective care in the attendance to the child with epilepsy.

Knowledge and attitude of parents or caretakers regarding transmissibility os caries disease

Dental caries is a transmissible infectious disease in which mutans streptococci are generally considered to be the main etiological agents. Although the transmissibility of dental caries is relatively well established in the literature, little is known whether information regarding this issue is correctly provided to the population. The present study aimed at evaluating, by means of a questionnaire, the knowledge and usual attitude of 640 parents and caretakers regarding the transmissibility of caries disease. Most interviewed adults did not know the concept of dental caries being an infectious and transmissible disease, and reported the habit of blowing and tasting food, sharing utensils and kissing the children on their mouth. 372 (58.1%) adults reported that their children had already been seen by a dentist, 264 (41.3%) answered that their children had never gone to a dentist, and 4 (0.6%) did not know. When the adults were asked whether their children had already had dental caries, 107 (16.7%) answered yes, 489 (76.4%) answered no, and 44 (6.9%) did not know. Taken together, these data reinforce the need to provide the population with some important information regarding the transmission of dental caries in order to facilitate a more comprehensive approach towards the prevention of the disease.

Changes in parents' and self-reports of behavioral problems in Brazilian adolescents after behavioral treatment with urine alarm for nocturnal enuresis

PURPOSE: Compare parents' reports of youth problems (PRYP) with adolescent problems self-reports (APSR) pre/post behavioral treatment of nocturnal enuresis (NE) based on the use of a urine alarm. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Adolescents (N = 19) with mono-symptomatic (primary or secondary) nocturnal enuresis group treatment for 40 weeks. Discharge criterion was established as 8 weeks with consecutive dry nights. PRYP and APSR were scored by the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and Youth Self-Report (YSR). RESULTS: Pre-treatment data: 1) Higher number of clinical cases based on parent report than on self-report for Internalizing Problems (IP) (13/19 vs. 4/19), Externalizing Problems (EP) (7/19 vs. 5/19) and Total Problem (TP) (11/19 vs. 5/19); 2) Mean PRYP scores for IP (60.8) and TP (61) were within the deviant range (T score ≥ 60); while mean PRYP scores for EP (57.4) and mean APSR scores (IP = 52.4, EP = 49.5, TP = 52.4) were within the normal range. Difference between PRYP' and APSR' scores was significant. Post treatment data: 1) Discharge for majority of the participants (16/19); 2) Reduction in the number of clinical cases on parental evaluation: 9/19 adolescents remained within clinical range for IP, 2/19 for EP, and 7/19 for TP. 3) All post-treatment mean scores were within the normal range; the difference between pre and post evaluation scores was significant for PRYP. CONCLUSIONS: The behavioral treatment based on the use of urine alarm is effective for adolescents with mono-symptomatic (primary and secondary) nocturnal enuresis. The study favors the hypothesis that enuresis is a cause, not a consequence, of other behavioral problems.