A report said that up to 200,000 young people were thought to be caring for a parent with severe mental health problems. As a result they were missing out on a normal childhood and had fewer opportunities for play and learning.
Source: Dan Robotham, Emma Beecham, Catherine Jackson and Kim Penketh, MyCare: The challenges facing young carers of parents with a severe mental illness, Mental Health Foundation/Princess Royal Trust for Carers
Links: Report | Summary | Morning Star report
Date: 2010-Dec
An independent advisory group on teenage pregnancy published its final annual report before being abolished by the government. It said that teenage pregnancy rates would rise again if central government and local authorities failed to prioritize the issue and invest in contraception and sex/relationships education.
Source: Annual Report 2008/09, Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group
Links: Report | FPA press release | Children & Young People Now report | BBC report | Nursing Times report | Morning Star report
Date: 2010-Dec
A paper reviewed evidence within the quantitative literature for the existence of neighbourhood effects on teenage parenthood. Although there was good reason to believe that neighbourhood and wider area influences might be associated with planned or unplanned teenage pregnancies, and with the propensity to continue to parenthood, the statistical evidence was mixed and relatively sparse.
Source: Ruth Lupton and Dylan Kneale, Are There Neighbourhood Effects on Teenage Parenthood in the UK, and Does It Matter for Policy? A review of theory and evidence, CASEpaper 141, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion/London School of Economics
Links: Paper
Date: 2010-Nov
Researchers examined the outcomes of the 'Care to Learn' programme, which supported young parents to continue their education by covering the costs of childcare while they undertook a programme of learning. Most young parents surveyed would not have been able to continue or return to training without the support provided.
Source: Timothy Riley et al., The Impact of Care to Learn: Tracking the destinations of young parents funded in 2008/09, 2007/08 and 2006/07, Young People's Learning Agency
Date: 2010-Oct
A report provided an interim assessment of a pilot that provided seven schemes designed to test a range of enhanced housing support packages for teenage parents.
Source: Sarah Johnsen and Deborah Quilgars, Teenage Parent Supported Housing Pilot Evaluation, Research Report RR050, Department for Education
Links: Report
Date: 2010-Oct
A study examined the lives, feelings, experiences, and support needs of young-parent families in Scotland during pregnancy and after the birth, focusing on the perspectives of young fathers.
Source: Nicola Ross, Stephanie Church, Malcolm Hill, Pete Seaman and Tom Roberts, The Fathers of Children Born to Teenage Mothers: A study of processes within changing family formation practices, CHILDREN 1ST
Links: Report | CHILDREN 1st press release
Date: 2010-Jun
An article examined the effect of parental educational expectations in shaping opportunity costs as predictors of early parenthood, using data from two British birth cohorts born in 1958 and 1970. Adult, usually parental, high educational expectations reduced the probability of young people becoming early parents, even in the presence of controlling factors that were usually assumed to account for this relationship. This indicated a role for parents in future interventions aimed at lowering levels of early parenthood.
Source: Dylan Kneale, 'Pushy parents make for later grandparents: parents' educational expectations and their children's fertility among two British cohorts', Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, Volume 1 Number 2
Links: Abstract
Date: 2010-May
A report said that too many teenage mothers abandoned career ambitions and resigned themselves to a low-income lifestyle because they faced barriers getting back into education. It highlighted truancy, bullying, and a lack of support at school as common experiences for teenage mothers.
Source: Jane Evans with Martha Slowley, Not the End of the Story: Supporting teenage mothers back into education, Barnardo's
Links: Report | Barnardo's press release | Guardian report | BBC report | Children & Young People Now report
Date: 2010-Mar
An article said that those in charge of local teenage pregnancy strategies had little, if any, ethnically coded data to draw on; and that it was 'not surprising' that they had had difficulties in targeting minority-ethnic groups. Statutory agencies should set up the necessary systems to ensure that collection of teenage pregnancy data by ethnic group was routine and robust.
Source: Peter Aspinall and Ferhana Hashem, 'Are our data on teenage pregnancy across ethnic groups in England fit for the purpose of policy formulation, implementation, and monitoring?', Critical Public Health, Volume 20 Number 1
Links: Abstract
Date: 2010-Mar
The government published a report setting out what had been achieved under its strategy for reducing teenage pregnancies, and what it proposed to do after 2010 (when the existing phase of the strategy ended). It said that there was a 'broad consensus' on the measures that were needed.
Source: Teenage Pregnancy Strategy: Beyond 2010, Department for Children, Schools and Families/Department of Health
Links: Report | Children & Young People Now report
Date: 2010-Feb
A new book presented recent quantitative and qualitative research on teenage motherhood and fatherhood. Parenthood was not necessarily a disaster for young women and young men, and indeed could sometimes improve their lives.
Source: Claire Alexander, Simon Duncan and Rosalind Edwards (eds.), Teenage Parenthood: What's the Problem?, Tufnell Press
Links: Summary | LSE press release | Guardian report
Date: 2010-Feb
An official advisory body on teenage pregnancy published its annual report for 2008-09. It said that the government's teenage pregnancy strategy needed to be extended beyond 2010 and developed further for the next decade.
Source: Annual Report 2008/09, Independent Advisory Group on Teenage Pregnancy
Links: Report
Date: 2010-Jan