OVERVIEW Partners in Pregnancy is a community program aimed at giving young couples the resources they need with their pregnancy. Young pregnant couples often find themselves searching for answers and help, but resources are scarce for this demographic regarding how to build a positive family environment. We realize that many young couples do not understand or are not fully prepared for the possible problems that may develop later in their relationship due to the pregnancy. These problems may cause a decrease in the overall satisfaction of their relationship. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION Partners in Pregnancy is a nonprofit organization in Alachua County that is dedicated to promoting strong bonds within the family conducive to creating a positive home environment. The vision of our program is to provide young pregnant couples counseling and referral services to help be loving and supportive parents. Partners in Pregnancy seeks to be a beacon in Alachua County that will guide young pregnant couples to mature healthy families. It will be the leading counseling and referral service provider, advancing the community by providing a meaningful and needed service. It will also seek out the assistance of other community programs and professionals. EVALUATION Purpose: The purpose of the evaluation of Partners in Pregnancy is to assess the outcome of the program within Alachua County. We would like to see if our Young Parenthood Program (YPP) model works for the demographic that we have. Furthermore we would like to pinpoint what is working within the program. We need to figure out if all of our goals are understood and being met within the guidelines. If we find that all goals are not being met appropriately, we would like to be able to improve that aspect of the program. ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION Simply put, program evaluations are conducted to make programs better. Evaluations benefit programs at every stage of implementation. Certain constraints will be challenging for this specific evaluation. For example, quality home environment is difficult to measure, so concrete and specific indicators will need to be coded and used in analyzing outcomes. New programs, like ours, need to contribute extra resources to evaluation in order to make sure that the program is succeeding (Metz, 2007). For this reason, our program will put 20% of the total budget towards its first evaluation in order to ensure enough funding to support a team that includes staff and an outside professional evaluator who is more experienced in statistical analysis. When programs manage evaluations in such a way that the various challenges are conquered, evaluations can help to make program operations more efficient and successful. This evaluation will provide Partners in Parenting with necessary information, allowing it to improve its program delivery and gain continued financial support (Metz, 2007). Teenage mothers are more likely to leave school, which leads to a lower educational level: they are prone to have financial problems and lower incomes in the future: they are associated with increased rates of alcohol and drug abuse. / RATIONALE It is imperative that we create a one-stop service that provides young parents with the counseling, referrals, and educational programs that they will need to properly raise their child and keep their relationship healthy. REFERENCES Child Welfare Information Gateway. (2009). Evaluating prevention programs.Retrieved November 28, 2009, from Florsheim, P., Burrow-Sanchez, J., McArthur, L., Hudak, C., & Heavin, S. (n.d.). The university of utah young parenthood program: Improving co-parenting relations and reducing risks among adolescent mothers and their partners. US Department of Health and Human Services. Retrieved November 19, 2009, from utah_abstract.pdf Metz, A., Ph.D. (2007). Why conduct a program evaluation? Five reasons why evaluation can help and out-of-school time program. Child Trends, Retrieved November 20, 2009, from _10_01_RB_WhyProgEval.pdf GROUP 7 Vanessa AbreuBrittany BalloDeShay Harris Jericka KnoxKatherine Norton EVALUATION QUESTIONS Assessing the knowledge and work ethic of staff: Does staff feel a sense of efficacy in their work? Does staff know the goals and mission statement set forth by the program? Assessing Clients: Client Intake Assessment – Baseline Data: What is the feeling in the home prior to participation in the program? What are the deficits and challenges faced by our clients in terms of their relationship and their pregnancy? Assessing clients’ understanding and knowledge: What skills did clients learn in this program? How will clients apply the skills learned in this program? What behavioral changes have clients made by the end of participation in the program? What is the feeling in the home following the program? Assessing the program: Have we succeeded in understanding, verifying and increasing impact of products or services on customers/clients (eg, outcomes evaluation)? What are the delivery mechanisms to be more efficient (eg, process evaluation)? EVALUATION PROCESS This evaluation will include the following steps: 1) collect the data, 2) organize the data, 3) analyze the data, and 4) report the data. The evaluation will be an experimental design in order to establish cause and effect. Clients will be assigned to an experimental or control group, with program services only provided to the couples in the experimental group. Using an experimental design is the best option since “experimental designs are the strongest framework for establishing causal relationships and have the highest credibility” (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2009). The staff portion of the evaluation will be more of a quasi-experimental design since the staff will be assessed as a group over time..