Adolescent Family Life Program

RECOMMENDATIONS

Appropriate $35 million in FY 2011 for the Adolescent Family Life (AFL) program.

Reauthorize and strengthen the Adolescent Family Life Act.

U.S. Senators—Originate a Dear Colleague sign-on letter to Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations leaders recommending $35 million in FY 2011 for the AFL program. Include a recommendation of $35 million in FY11 for the AFL program in the Senator’s annual Program Request letter to Appropriations leaders. Introduce or co-sponsor legislation to reauthorize and strengthen the Adolescent Family Life Act.

U.S. Representatives—Originate a Dear Colleague sign-on letter to Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations leaders recommending $35 million in FY 2011 for the AFL program. Include a recommendation of $35 million in FY11 for the AFL program in the Representative’s annual Program Request letter to Appropriations leaders. Introduce or co-sponsor legislation to reauthorize and strengthen the Adolescent Family Life Act.

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ISSUE STATUS

(visit www.nn4youth.org periodically for status updates)

The AFL program received $16.66 million in FY 2010. The President’s FY 2011 Budget Request recommends level funding for the AFL program. 

Congress has not reauthorized the AFLA since 1984. Healthy Teen Network has developed recommendations for reauthorizing and strengthening the Adolescent Family Life Act. The National Network for Youth supports those recommendations.

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WHY THIS MATTERS

Young Families are at Higher Risk of Poor Health and Social Outcomes than Adult Families. Compared to older pregnant women, pregnant teens are far less likely to receive timely and consistent prenatal care, often are not at adequate pre-pregnancy weight, and/or do not gain the appropriate amount of weight while pregnant. Infants born to teen mothers are at increased risk of being born prematurely and at a low birth weight, putting newborns at greater risk for infant death, respiratory distress syndrome, bleeding in the brain, vision loss, and serious intestinal problems.

Young Families Benefit from Coordinated Health and Human Services Supports. The health and positive development of a young family, as well as their likelihood of repeating a too early pregnancy, is dependent on the parents’ success at accessing a system of support for the family unit—including a safe place to live, health care, adequate income, child care while attending school or work, and other necessary social services. Young parents who lack resources or support typically must cobble together resources and services from multiple public and nonprofit agencies in their communities. The process of determining eligibility and accessing these services can be confusing to the savviest adult, much less a young person with limited knowledge about government programs and community resources.  Young families benefit when they are able to obtain access to a network of resources and services through coordinated and seamless systems of care.

AFLA is An Oft-Overlooked Federal Law Targeted to Expectant and Parenting Youth. Congress enacted the Adolescent Family Life Act in 1981 and has continued each year since then to appropriate funds for ALFA demonstration and research programs. The AFL program has funded hundreds of local projects that aimed to demonstrate the effectiveness of various approaches to adolescent pregnancy prevention and to care services for expectant and parenting youth.

Reauthorization of AFLA is Long Overdue. Congress has not reauthorized AFLA since 1984. Healthy Teen Network and National Network for Youth are recommending that Congress reauthorize AFLA, and in so doing strengthen the law as follows:

• Transition the AFL care program from a demonstration initiative to a permanent health and human services care coordination and delivery program.  Care grantees should be expected to establish Young Family Resource Centers that would function as the first point of contact in the community for young parents to access resources and services already available and to receive health and social services not currently available or not targeted to young families.
• Raise the age of eligibility for AFL care services from up to age 19 to age 24.
• Expand the range of eligible necessary services to include housing assistance and substance abuse services.
• Eliminate the requirement that each care grantee demonstrate their project effectiveness through a formal scientific evaluation, and instead require grantees to report outcomes and performances through a central monitoring system.
• Authorize a single cross-site comparative evaluation of care program models for expectant and parenting youth.
• Authorize a periodic study of the resources and services needs of expectant and parenting youth.
• Increase the authorization level for AFL to $150 million annual.

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BACKGROUND

The Adolescent Family Life Act, created in 1981 as Title XX of the Public Health Service Act supports demonstration projects to develop, implement and evaluate program interventions to promote abstinence from sexual activity among adolescents and to provide comprehensive health care, education and social services to pregnant and parenting adolescents. The program supports two basic types of demonstration projects: (1) prevention demonstration projects to develop, test, and use curricula that provide education and activities designed to encourage adolescents to postpone sexual activity until marriage, and (2) care demonstration projects to develop interventions with pregnant and parenting teens, their infants, male partners, and family members in an effort to ameliorate the effects of too-early-childbearing for teen parents, their babies and their families. AFLA also funds grants to support research on the causes and consequences of adolescent premarital sexual relations, adolescent pregnancy and parenting.

In 2009-2010, the AFL program supported 52 demonstration projects across the country. These projects consisted of 21 prevention programs and 31 care programs.

In FY 2010, Congress transferred funding for the prevention component of the AFL program to a new teen pregnancy prevention initiative, and also removed the abstinence-only restriction on the transferred and additional teen pregnancy prevention funds.