The document discusses the effectiveness of various anti-poverty programs in helping youth development. It finds that some programs like the Children's Aid Society Carrera Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Program and Quantum Opportunities Program led to improved outcomes for teens, while others like the 21st Century Community Learning Centers showed no benefits or even increased behavioral issues. Successful programs tend to provide caring adult relationships, engagement, skill-building activities, and structure over the long-term.

1. It makes intuitive sense that anti-poverty
programs should lead to improvements in
individual and family health, but do they?
And if so, which anti-poverty programs have
helped, and how?
Bob Atkins and Dan Hart
Center for Children and Childhood
Studies, Rutgers University-Camden

2. Overview
• Anti-poverty: MTO and Harlem Children’s Zone
• Anti-Poverty and Youth development programs
• Youth development programs: what works, what doesn’t and
why

3. What do we hope to promote?

4. Youth capable of achieving healthy and
constructive adulthoods
– Physically healthy
– Capable of work
– Thoughtful and reflective
– Caring and ethical
– Civically engaged

5. The reality of youth development interventions
(Beckett, 2008)
• Modest impacts
• Resource intensive

6. Thinking about what works?
• Children’s Aid Society
• Quantum Opportunities Program
• CASASTART

7. The Children's Aid Society Carrera Adolescent
Pregnancy Prevention Program
Outcomes
Teen intervention
• Year-round after-school • reduced teen pregnancy
program with a work-related and births among female
intervention (Job Club); an
academic component;
participants after four
comprehensive family life and years.
sexuality education; arts • increased high school
component; and sports. graduation and college
• Also includes mental health enrollment (seven years
care and medical care
(Philliber et al., 2002). following start of the
program and three years
after the conclusion of the
program).

8. Quantum Opportunities Program
Teen Intervention Outcomes
• Youth development • More likely to graduate
program for economically from high school (than
disadvantaged youth control)
• Participants (Associates) • To be in post-secondary
engage in 250 hours of school
education, development, • Less likely to be high
and community services school dropouts
activities—year round
• Also receive
comprehensive case
management

9. CASASTART
Teen intervention Outcomes
• Serves high risk youth • As compared to controls,
from severely participants less likely to
disadvantaged have:
neighborhoods – Used drugs
• Substance abuse and – Distributed drugs
delinquency prevention— – Committed violent crime
serves young
adolescents and families:
case management,
mentoring, instructional
support

10. Besides work in multiple domains and
promotion of well-being, what do these
programs have in common?
• Caring, youth-adult relationship that provides
nurturance and creates opportunities
• Year round (and long term) involvement, which
requires engagement
• Skill development
• Structured curriculum
Roth, J., Brooks-Gunn, J., Murray, L., & Foster, W. (1998). Promoting healthy
adolescents: Synthesis of youth development program evaluations. Journal of
Research on Adolescence, 8, 423-459.

11. Adults
• 1-to-1 adult-adolescent relationship, or
mentoring
– compared to those without, adolescents
with a mentor fare better in terms of
• college attendance
• mental health
• problem behavior
Rhodes, J. E., & DuBuois, D. L. (2006). Understanding and Facilitating the Youth Mentoring Movement. Social Policy
Report. Volume XX, Number III.

12. Adults
• Key elements
– warmth and connection
• facilitated by shared interests
• but not by racial/ethnic matching
– modeling of behavior
– attunement to youth’s desires and needs
– regular contact; ideally not months, but years
– sharing of
• connections
• knowledge
• capital
Rhodes, J. E., & DuBuois, D. L. (2006). Understanding and Facilitating the Youth Mentoring Movement. Social Policy
Report. Volume XX, Number III.

13. Engagement and Skill Development
• Without
engagement, there
will be no
involvement
• Without
involvement, there
can be no skill
development

14. Funding and careful evaluation important…but
not enough

15. 21st Century Community Learning Centers
After school program Outcomes
• Elementary school • Increase in behavioral
children problems during school
• Varied by site (e.g., suspensions)
“homegrown” (Homework • No improvement in
assistance, free time, academic outcomes
outdoor play).

16. Hypothesized problems with 21st Century
Community Learning Centers
• Toleration of behaviors during afterschool that were not
tolerated in school
• Unstructured curriculum
• Other problems

17. What doesn’t work
• Mentoring relationships
less than 6 months long
(may hurt participants)
Rhodes, J. E., & DuBuois, D. L. (2006). Understanding and Facilitating the Youth Mentoring Movement. Social Policy
Report. Volume XX, Number III.

18. What doesn’t work
• Aggregation of deviant
peers (can increase
delinquency and
behavioral problems)
– new skills
– new audience
– identity
Dodge, K. A., Dishion, T. J., & Lansford, J. E. (2006). Deviant peer influences in
intervention and public policy for youth. Social Policy Report, XX #1.

19. Community Programming Aggregating Deviant
Peers
• Midnight basketball
• Boot camps
Dodge, K. A., Dishion, T. J., & Lansford, J. E. (2006). Deviant peer influences in
intervention and public policy for youth. Social Policy Report, XX #1.

20. Summary
 Problem-free is not fully prepared: we want youth to be healthy,
reflective, work-ready, caring, citizens
 There are good, evidence-based models for achieving these goals—but
they are resource intense and require fidelity.
 Good programs feature warm, enduring relationships with adults
extended through time, skill development, opportunities to build
prosocial competence.