The support agenda

The EET target was presented as a means of preventing the long-term social exclusion of teenage mothers, enabling them to raise their aspirations and ultimately become self-supporting. In addition, the EET target is seen not only as a way to improve current economic circumstances but also to prevent the children of teenage mothers becoming the citizen-claimants of the future. The Care to Learn (CtL) initiative is a key factor in progress towards the EET target, providing financial assistance to teenage mothers to assist with transport and childcare costs when engaging in further education (Dench and Casebourne, Reference Dench and Casebourne2004).

In 2001, the support agenda saw the introduction of the Sure Start Plus (SSP) pilot initiative, which ran in 20 existing Health Action Zones until March 2006. The programme targeted pregnant teenagers and teenaged parents aged up to 18 years and 11 months. At the outset, four main aims of SSP were established, which echoed the aims of the main Sure Start programme. These were to improve social and emotional wellbeing, learning and health, and to strengthen the families and communities of pregnant young women, young parents and their children. The organisational location of the service varied, with some advisers operating through institutions such as primary care trusts (PCTs) or social services departments, while others belonged to discrete units or multi-agency teams. July 2007 saw the publication of new guidance for local authorities and PCTs (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2007). This continued many of the themes of SSP; the EET target remained prominent and CtL was to continue. The tone of the guidance also continued in a similar vein to previous initiatives, stating that teenage mothers ‘will not need to claim benefits in the long term as they will have the means to support themselves’ (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2007: 56). A notable change in the support agenda is the channels through which it will be delivered. Support for teenage mothers will now be delivered through two mainstream channels: Children's Centres and Targeted Youth Support services. However, the commonality between these services is that a lead professional acts as a personal adviser, who also works in a brokerage capacity in referring teenage mothers to other services.

Throughout its operation, many concerns have been voiced as to the nature of the support agenda, particularly its apparent primary focus on EET (TPS Evaluation Team, 2005). It can be argued that the presence of an EET target for the teenage parent support arm of Children's Centres risks the initiative becoming target-led, as opposed to needs-led, and putting in jeopardy the involvement of teenage parents in developing the services they need. Duncan (Reference Duncan2007) has argued that the very nature of the support agenda is flawed due to the rationality mistake, whereby policy-makers assume that teenage motherhood is evidence of low expectations, whereas teenage mothers themselves see their motherhood as positive and rational, given the opportunities available to them. Many have criticised the NEET label (Not in Education, Employment or Training) insofar as it has negative connotations for those to whom it is applied (Yates and Payne, Reference Yates and Payne2006) and in its failure to capture the aspirations of young people (Shaw and Woolhead, Reference Shaw and Woolhead2006). However, it appears that the EET approach is not entirely at odds with the aspirations of young mothers. The evaluation of the TPS suggested that having a child provides motivation for young mothers to aspire to educational and employment goals that they previously may not have held. In addition, particularly among those in settled relationships with partners, the young women may wish to have a second or third child to complete their families prior to engaging in education, employment or training, which they will often postpone until their children are all at school (TPS Evaluation Team, 2005). Indeed, it has been noted that many women explicitly prioritise caring roles over any obligation they feel to participate in EET:

Supporting teenage mothers: the research evidence

Considering the ways in which support for teenage mothers is delivered, it can be argued that there are two mechanisms. First, support can be given on a one-to-one basis, in which teenage mothers are allocated a professional who will be their main point of contact with support services, much like the role of the SSP Personal Adviser outlined above. Secondly, support can be delivered on a group basis, in which teenage mothers receive support from a professional while with peers. It is noted that New Labour appears to favour the one-to-one method of supporting teenage mothers, while largely failing to acknowledge the value of the group mechanism (Kidger, Reference Kidger2004; McLeod et al., Reference McLeod, Baker and Black2006). McLeod et al.'s study investigated the nature of formal social support provision for young mothers in a city in the North of England and found that group support and activities were a largely underdeveloped area: ‘there were very few opportunities available for young parents to socially interact with one another to build support networks’ (Reference McLeod, Baker and Black2006: 461). It was argued that this was disappointing, given the potential of young parents to add to the social capital of communities. Further concerns to this end were voiced in the TPS evaluation: ‘there is still an unmet need for provision of real opportunities for young mothers to socialise and support one another and each other's children’ (TPS Evaluation Team, 2005: 82). It could be argued that this is part of a wider phenomenon of the personal adviser culture discussed by Garratt (Reference Garratt2002). Such mechanisms are evident in other initiatives to support young people, namely Connexions and the New Deal for Young People.

Turning to examine previous research that has evaluated the contribution of these two support mechanisms, the following points emerge. First, considering the one-to-one mode of support, it has been argued that this may be chosen as a means of building confidence prior to participating in group support (de Jonge, Reference de Jonge2001). However, the rationale behind the selection of one-to-one support does not appear to have been considered in any further detail, and this was echoed in studies examining group-based support. Regarding the functions of one- to-one support, the sole contribution in this area appears to be that of Wiggins et al. (Reference Wiggins, Rosato, Austerberry, Sawtell and Oliver2005) in their evaluation of SSP, in which they identified various factors pertaining to the provision of an intensive and comprehensive form of support, such as advisers being persistent with clients and acting as a gateway to other services. Literature on the group mechanism largely emanates from the USA, where support largely consists of programmes with a strong emphasis on parent education. However, it is argued that the group mechanism in itself acts to provide empathetic peer support (Censullo, Reference Censullo1994), increase general self-confidence (Weinman et al., Reference Weinman, Schreiber and Robinson1992; Censullo, Reference Censullo1994), increase confidence in parenting abilities (Letourneau et al., Reference Letourneau, Stewart and Barnfather2004), provide an opportunity to meet other teenage mothers and be free from the stigmatisation often experienced in general parents groups with older participants (de Jonge, Reference de Jonge2001). Lastly, there appears to have been no direct comparative study of one-to-one and group support modes carried out in the UK, and it can be argued that this is a significant gap in the literature, given the potential to establish the value of different modes of support to cater to a wide variety of support needs.

The study

The findings are drawn from a wider PhD research project, of which experiences of formal support services were a key focus. There were a total of 20 participants, ten of whom used support that was delivered on a one-to-one basis and ten who used the group support mode. The participants came from the Midlands region and were recruited via the support services they used. Regarding the nature of these support services, the one-to-one support services closely followed the type of support advocated by the SSP initiative, whereby each teenage mother had a personal adviser. The group support services were similar to the more general mother and toddler groups popular among older mothers; they met once a week and any activities were planned in consultation with the participants. Each participant took part in a semi-structured interview, which was transcribed, coded and analysed through meaning condensation (Rubin and Rubin, Reference Rubin and Rubin2005), coding, context charts, and pattern coding (Miles and Huberman, Reference Miles and Huberman1994). Details of the backgrounds of the participants are included in Tables 1 and 2.

TABLE 1.

The participants from the one-to-one support service

TABLE 2.

The participants from the group support services

The interviews were structured around themes, which consisted of the following.

• • The participant's individual circumstances, which included their experiences of motherhood, their informal support networks and their values and beliefs about education and work.

• • The participants' experiences of stigma; how this manifested itself, their feelings about stigma and to what extent they felt affected by it.

• • The participant's experiences of support services were investigated; why they had opted for a particular mode of support, what they had gained from participation and any criticisms.

Relevant comments made by the participants are included as extracts throughout the discussion of the findings within this article. The limitations of this study focus upon two points: participants were recruited on the grounds that they used formal support services, and thus the study excluded those who did not utilise these services. The inclusion of such individuals would have offered further insights into the reasons behind non-participation in formal support services. Following on from this, it might have been the case that those not engaging with formal support services might have drawn more extensively on informal modes of support, and it would have enhanced the study to be able to explore further the relationship between informal and formal support. The second point focuses upon the institutional context of the support services. All of the support services in this study were working through local PCTs, therefore only offering one institutional context for the research. Recruitment posters were displayed at support services of various institutional locations; however, the participants who came forward were those who used the services which worked through the PCTs. It would have been beneficial to the study to be able to consider whether the institutional location of the support service had an impact upon the participants' experiences of formal support. In particular, this would have enabled the observations made by Wiggins et al. (Reference Wiggins, Rosato, Austerberry, Sawtell and Oliver2005), that advisers based in Connexions prioritised the EET targets in their work, to be further investigated as to how this affected the support they were able to provide.

Selection of support services

As had been established from examining the previous literature, little was known as to what factors were influential in an individual's selection of a mode of support: what made some more likely to opt for group support while others preferred one-to-one based support? The research aimed to contribute to the body of knowledge in this area by looking into the reasons stated by the participants for choosing a particular support mode and by examining the individual circumstances of those participating in one-to-one and group-based support. Table 3 provides a summary of the findings as to selection of a mode of support for the teenage mothers in this study.

TABLE 3.

Selecting a mode of support

Regarding the reasons stated by the participants for their choice of support mode, it can be observed that a key difference between the one-to-one and group support participants is that all of the group participants gave reasons that pertained to the choice of group support in itself, rather than as an alternative to other support modes. The latter was the case for some one-to-one support participants, who had chosen the one-to-one mode because they could not, or did not want to, access group support. Some one-to-one participants had selected this mode of support because group support was not available to them, while others stated that they wanted to avoid other teenage mothers, as they did not identify with them and, indeed, often made stigmatising comments towards other teenage mothers, which served to reinforce their beliefs that they were exceptions to commonly portrayed stereotypes. This contrasts sharply with the group support participants, all of whom stated at least one reason which related to a desire to be around their peers.

Another contrast appears when observing the second type of reason given by group support participants for choosing the group support mode, that of establishing a routine. It can be suggested that this reason relates to the fact that most of the group participants were postponing engagement in learning or work until their children were older. Therefore, they were unable to build a daily or weekly routine around the structure relating to college or employment experiences, and looked to the group support service, which ran on a particular day and time, as a means of establishing a regular routine. This diverges from the one-to-one support participants, some of whom were engaged in work and learning and subsequently had established routines around these activities; therefore they did not have such criteria in mind when selecting a mode of support. Indeed, wanting easy access to professional advice was stated as a reason for selecting one-to-one support. It could be argued that one-to-one support is a more practical mode for those mothers who cannot fit in around group support times.

Reasons pertaining to their children's social skills were stated by group participants but not one-to-one participants for choice of a mode of support. Examining this further, the following explanations for this difference can be suggested. First, the nature of group support was such that children would be interacting with other children, and may make development of the child's social skills a more explicit reason for choosing group support, compared to the nature of one-to-one support, which does not typically involve such interaction. A second explanation centres on the fact that some of the one-to-one participants were engaging in learning or work and had consequently enrolled their children in a nursery. Therefore, the development of their children's social skills was already being addressed by being in a nursery environment, so this was not of concern to the participants when selecting a mode of support.

Further insights can be gained through examining the backgrounds of the participants. Taking firstly their existing modes of informal support, group participants were likely to have substantial informal support networks, consisting of family and partners or friends. This was not the case for one-to-one participants, whose informal support networks were more limited. Therefore, for group support participants, involvement in a group of peers could be suggested as complementary to the informal support they already had, enabling them to establish additional friendships outside of their existing networks. However, the choice of one-to-one support could be interpreted, for some, to be an attempt to establish support that was regular and reliable, as informal support from their existing sources was sometimes changeable, if present at all. Therefore, while the choice of one-to-one support can be interpreted as a step to establish support, the choice of group support can be interpreted for some as a move to expand it.

In terms of the participants' views of motherhood, a notable difference was that some one-to-one participants stated that their motherhood had been a turning point away from negative behaviour, whereas none of the group participants stated this. It can be argued that these participants therefore believed themselves to be in need of the advice of a professional in the form of a personal adviser. Having previously engaged in negative behaviour, they may have wanted to ensure that they stayed on the right track and had access to advice that would help them cope better with motherhood. However, as the vast majority of participants from both the one-to-one and group support services stated that their view of motherhood was positive, one cannot conclude that view of motherhood influences the choice of support service any further than the point discussed here.

The findings also discovered relationships between the participants' values as to education and work and their choice of support service. Participants in the one-to-one support services were likely to have wanted to, or experienced pressure from others, to participate in EET as soon as was possible and believed that they could combine being a mother to a small child with work or learning. This contrasts with the group support participants, who were unlikely to want to engage in EET imminently. While the majority of group participants wanted to engage in EET in the future, they wished to postpone it in order to spend time with their children while they were babies and toddlers. This can be argued to have had an influence on the choice of support in the following ways. One-to-one support may be considered conducive to early participation in EET as the personal adviser may be envisaged by the participants as a first source of contact for enrolling in a college course or embarking upon an employment search. This is not a pressing concern for the group participants, who are postponing their engagement in EET, and therefore their choice of a support service would not have involved this type of concern, at least not initially.

Functions of support services

The second focus of this article is upon the functions of one-to-one and group support services, in what ways are they similar and how they differ? While previous literature has examined functions of support services, it has done so to a limited extent and lacks a comparative focus. This study identifies a wide range of functions being carried out by support services, which can be grouped into the following categories: advice, social, personal development, stigma management, child's social skills and crisis. These functions of the support service are laid out in Table 4.

TABLE 4.

Functions of support services compared