Research by Author & Topic

Publications by Martha R. Burt on Adolescents and Youth Development

In testimony before the U.S. House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, homelessness expert Martha Burt discusses how many homeless youth there are, their characteristics, the factors that predispose youth to become homeless, and the most promising points and types of intervention.

This report identifies six community-wide approaches to preventing homelessness, three focused on families, two focused on people with serious mental illness, and one focused on youth. It describes four elements common to successful programs: (1) the ability to target people seriously at risk of homelessness; (2) the motivation to invest resources for prevention; (3) mechanisms for maximizing resources by collaborating with non-housing agencies such as child welfare and mental health; and (4) leadership that sets goals, develops strategies, and uses data to track progress, provide feedback, and support improvements.

The Office of Adolescent Pregnancy Programs (OAPP/DHHS) has been encouraging its abstinence-oriented grantees to incorporate youth development strategies. It wanted to learn (1) more about the relationship between these strategies and prevention of sexual risk taking, (2) how its funded programs have combined youth development and abstinence education components, and (3) whether one could determine the independent effects of each component on youth outcomes. This report describes findings related to these issues from a comprehensive literature review, examination of grantee documents, and site visits. Recommendations focus on strengthening the usefulness of grantee year-end reports, strengthening individual grantee evaluations, and strengthening OAPP's ability to assess effectiveness across grantees.

During summer and fall 2002, Urban Institute staff visited three communities for The Wallace Foundation to learn as much as possible about existing community-based programs for children and youth and the interconnections among them. This brief describes the goals of this work, what we did to accomplish them, and what we learned in the process. It focuses particularly on the technique of "community mapping" as we used it. We present results obtained for the three communities visited, not for their own sake but as illustrations of how other communities or funders might apply the technique to expand and improve their programming for children and youth. Because of its graphical nature, community mapping reveals otherwise hidden patterns in community programs, which can lead to more informed and effective decisions about these programs.

The authors argue that it is important for developing countries to invest in adolescents, both to prevent the negative consequences of potential risky behavior and to promote healthy growth, modern skills, and the capacity to participate in the society of the future. The authors also argue that the most effective way to make such investments is to think and act holistically and from a preventive and developmental outlook.

This report consists of a review of the literature pertaining to adolescents, their risk behaviors and associated personal and societal costs, and protective factors. The view of adolescence presented here has important implications for working with adolescents. The report offers a framework that summarizes the major protective factors and risk factors that come into play in the lives of adolescents. The report makes recommendations for program structure and future research upon which to base program decisions.

This report examines the services, staffing, funding, and clientele of publicly funded family planning clinics in the United States. A review of the evolution of family-planning services and their changing clientele during the 1980s is included. It presents the views and concerns of clinic managers concerning changes in programs and policies that may occur under health care reform and includes recommendations about program alternatives.

The nation's major welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, distributes more than half its payments to women who were teenagers when their first child was born. Private Crisis, Public Cost investigates the policy opportunities for reducing welfare costs in this substantial sector of the dependent population.