COMMENT BY THE MINISTRY OF YOUTH AFFAIRS ON "MAKING THE SYSTEM WORK FOR THE AT-RISK STUDENT".

He Huarahi Tamariki has succeeded, despite some well-documented obstacles, because of the tremendous leadership and commitment from its staff, volunteers and students. The lessons learnt by Susan Baragwanath and her team highlight some of the policy gaps which need to be addressed if this and similar initiatives elsewhere are to thrive.

One of the reasons that He Huarahi Tamariki has succeeded is because it is a practical community-driven project. Too often policy solutions are developed in a vacuum without any thought as to how they might work in practice, or what sort of structural barriers they may encounter.

The importance of highly skilled, professional staff cannot be overstated. As one source said, what is needed is "a good role model to plant a vision who then sticks around long enough to help them turn that vision into reality".

However, hanging onto and rewarding competent staff requires continuity of funding, sound professional development and support, and agencies working together to meet the needs of the target group. Rules and regulations can introduce unnecessary obstacles and work against the innovation of initiatives like He Huarahi Tamariki which are specifically designed to accommodate those young people whose needs are not being met through mainstream channels.

The Ministries of Youth Affairs and Women's Affairs have recently collaborated to produce a paper on ways to improve access to education for those who became parents as teenagers before completing their secondary education (1998). In the course of its development much was learnt from He Huarahi Tamariki's experience.

The paper draws on New Zealand and overseas experience in order to identify effective policy strategies to support such access. As the policy phase of this work begins with officials in other key government departments and Ministries, a number of areas for further consideration have emerged.

1. Whether student rights of access to education could be made clearer and more flexible through:

* Establishment of an entitlement to thirteen years of free schooling that is flexible enough to accommodate those students who need time out when they become young parents. This entitlement could include study on a part-time basis to acknowledge the demands of parenting.

* Flexibility for part-time curriculum packages to be offered by the Correspondence School within their adult and under-16 sections, and with no restrictions regarding the number of subjects or whether the subject is taught locally.

2. Options to improve funding and support for service providers including:

* Increasing the per-student funding (with attached criteria) for those schools and community- and iwi-based projects that work with teenage parents.

* Development funding for schools and community/iwi based providers wishing to design alternative programmes, to cover initial start-up costs, childcare, suitable transport, initial outreach and programme development work.

* Facilitation of the sharing of information and development of networks for schools (and community organisations) interested in developing teen-age parent programmes through workshops, newsletters, e-mail discussion groups.

* Developing and resourcing professional development opportunities for teachers working with "at-risk" youth and teen-age parents.

* A review of funding protocols between the Community Funding Agency (CFA), Education and Health to facilitate joint services planning and funding of community projects that include childcare, parenting and health components along with a more formal educational component.

* Enabling CFA funding of non-curriculum-based aspects of school-based initiatives for this group.

3. Considering the income support for the teen-age parents themselves, including:

* Income support entitlements (including student allowance/training incentive allowance eligibility) for teen-age parents in different age groups and different educational settings to determine if there is a gap in meeting actual costs of childcare, transport and other educational costs

* Consider how to bridge any gap either through revised income support entitlements or direct programme-provider funding.

* A review of the work-testing criteria for those teen-age parents on benefits to encourage their completion of secondary education or other relevant training prior to seeking paid work, if a link is established.

In the current funding environment, Ministry of Education support for work with teenage parents is limited to schools and school-linked units such as Activity Centres and Attached Units providing "alternative learning opportunities". Community Funding Agency can support programmes that relate to parenting, social work and family support needs of the young parents but not any programmes that are curriculum-related. And yet research and practical programme experience shows the need for an integrated approach to assist these students to be learning ready -- attending to health, income support, housing, parenting, education, employment and other needs. Funding support to narrowly defined, specific objectives may bring a useful clarity of rationale for government agencies, but it can also establish structural barriers for programmes that relate to the objectives of a variety of agencies. There are now some models developing in case management for one government agency to take a lead role, in consultation with other interested agencies. Similarly the funding regime could consider the concept of one government agency taking a lead funding role, even though the programmes delivered may include elements of what might be considered another agency's "patch".

The barriers to accessing Correspondence School should also be able to be addressed. Provision of Correspondence School courses provides learning support for some (but by no means all) of the needs of this group. Even with the additional pastoral support offered by one section of the Correspondence School (for under-16-year-old mothers), it is estimated that only a quarter of these students manage to follow through to achieve their learning goals. A partnership between the Correspondence School staff with specialist curriculum knowledge and a local school can:

* offer individual, face-to-face coaching that can address gaps in academic education, including basic literacy skills;

* provide a context within which self-motivation, confidence and life skills can be nurtured in a peer group setting;

* provide study facilities often unavailable in the student's home;

* meet childcare, transport and other basic needs that otherwise take priority over schooling; and

* minimise resource wastage by improving students' ability to follow through and achieve learning goals.

Teenage parenthood can be a turning point that reduces these young people's life opportunities in education and employment. The 1996 Census shows that there were 3,561 single parents aged 15-19 years of whom just over half (52%) have no formal qualifications and only 17% have a qualification equivalent to School Certificate or above. However, teenage parenting can also prompt a new motivation for education arising from a strong commitment to be a good parent and to build a better future for their children.

The key is to be able to offer an effective, supportive learning environment when these young parents consider re-engaging in education. This stage of being motivated and ready to learn is often some years after first becoming a parent and, commonly, beyond the age of 19 when their right to free schooling has gone. To effectively use this "window of opportunity" requires a variety of part-time, modular, distance, full-time, mainstream school and alternative programme options to meet the different needs and circumstances of this group.

US research compared teenage mothers who had access to childcare and other supportive services with those who did not. Young mothers who did not have access to comprehensive services had much lower rates of completing high school: 80% failed to graduate, 69% were on welfare by the time their first child was four years old, 40% were likely to be on welfare for a decade or longer. Teenage mothers who had dependable childcare, along with counselling, parent education and transportation, seemed to have more promising futures: 80% earned a high school diploma, a quarter of those graduates went on to college, 65% would go on to earn incomes above the poverty line. The average cost of these interventions was calculated at $(US)10,000 a year. It was estimated that taxpayers would save three times as much per family over the next decade in health, welfare and other subsidies (Ludtke 1997). The same research also showed that young mothers offered comprehensive support were more likely to postpone the birth of their second child which had positive impacts on the first child's health, subsequent children's health, and parental opportunities.

Similarly, investment in programme support for fathers whose education is disrupted by teenage parenting has also proven worthwhile. A two-year national research and demonstration project in the 1980s in the US supported eight programmes for nearly 400 teen-age fathers. Core programme elements (usually integrated with programmes for teenage mothers) included counselling, vocational training, employment placement, educational services, parenting skills, family planning and pre-natal education (Lerman and Ooms 1993). The documented outcomes included a reported decrease in abusive behaviour, reduced likelihood of parenting prematurely again, more understanding of child development/parenting skills, positive educational outcomes for about half the participants and improved employment outcomes for around 40%.

There is now an opportunity to bring together the research evidence and practical local experience to provide a sound basis on which to move forward in policy development.

REFERENCES

Lerman, Robert and Theodora Ooms (1993) Young Unwed Fathers: Changing Roles and Emerging Policies, Temple University Press, Philadelphia.

Ludtke, Melissa (1997) On our Own: Unwed Motherhood in America, Random House, New York.

Ministry of Youth Affairs (1998) "Report on Access to Education for Teenage Mothers and Fathers" unpublished paper prepared by the Ministry of Youth Affairs in conjunction with the Ministry of Women's Affairs, June.