Organization and staffing barriers to parent involvement in teen pregnancy prevention programs: Challenges for community partnerships

Purpose: To evaluate parent involvement in a Southern California teen pregnancy prevention community partnership project. Researchers expected to find parent and family-related participation barriers similar to those described in the family support literature, which they could address with program modifications. Methods: Three phases of qualitative evaluation occurred: key informant interviews and focus groups with youth and parents; focus groups with service providers; and key informant interviews with service providers, their supervisor, and the collaborative coordinator. Theory-based, open-ended question guides directed the interviews and focus groups, and transcriptions were coded and themed using grounded theory methods. Results: Parents and youth sought ways to improve connections and communication with each other, and parents welcomed parenting education from the project. Unexpectedly, the major obstacles to parent participation identified in this project were largely organizational, and included the assignment of parent involvement tasks to agencies lacking capacities to work effectively with parents, inadequate administrative support for staff, and the absence of an effective system for communicating concerns and resolving conflicts among collaborative partners. Conclusions: Youth serving agencies may not be the best partners to implement effective parent involvement or family support interventions. Collaborative leadership must identify appropriate partners, engender their cooperation, and support their staff to further the overall goals of the collaborative. © 2005 Society for Adolescent Medicine. All rights reserved.