EOY FY25: As noted in the mid year report, attendance at group sessions continues to be challenging for our Teen Parents because they are juggling so much and often lack support from their own parents/families. Transportation also continues to be a barrier. The one-on-one sessions are better attended and more helpful in some ways because they are often conducted either in their homes or at the Family Support Center in conjunction with other services, which makes it far easier for the teen moms to participate. They all express how much they enjoy and value the group sessions when they can attend - being among other teen parents can feel very comforting and validating, particularly given the struggles and trauma associated with being a teen parent - but we're finding that the group sessions are just challenging because these youth often have so little flexibility in their days or are struggling with other issues (baby health, school work, family conflict, etc.) that make attending very hard.

Staff continue to work on ways to address these barriers to encourage and improve attendance but we also spent the spring thinking about the model and wondering if we should offer and track group sessions differently, and also potentially move to having some sessions be virtual. The Partnership has had success with virtual group sessions in both one of our youth mentoring programs as well as with our 2Gen project in our Family Stability program; both programs incorporated virtual sessions as a pandemic response but they were very successful and helped overcome transportation as a barrier so they kept a component of the virtual model even after in-person group activities could be safely resumed. So we are exploring whether or not this can be done effectively for this program and population in FY25.

• West County Family Support Center
• AACC Teach Institute & Parenting Center
• AACPS
• Teen parents
• Family members
• Partnership CYF

• Virtual options as an alternative to in person group sessions or in a hybrid model where some meetings are virtual and others remain in person
• Funding for transportation (Uber, Lyft, etc.)
• Changing schedule of group sessions to better align with teen parents schedules and the supports available to them
• Increase 1 on 1 sessions, decrease group sessions

The BEST 2.0 team and Family Support Center staff are collaborating on incorporating a couple of different approaches to try to make the group sessions - which all of the teen parents really like and value when they can be present - more accessible through a combo of schedule adjustments and incorporation of virtual options.