Welfare Mother Plan Fails to Halt Pregnancy Trend : Social services: The New Chance program has raised the education level and mothering skills of teen-agers. But results of its attempt to discourage repeat childbearing are disappointing.

An experimental program being tested in California as part of a national effort to move teen-age welfare mothers toward self-sufficiency has shown disappointing results in discouraging repeat pregnancies and reducing reliance on government assistance, according to findings being released today.

The program, called New Chance, demonstrated substantial success in raising the education level of young mothers and modest success in improving their parenting skills. But the study found that, like other programs in the past, it had little impact on one of the most serious problems facing teen-agers on welfare--repeat pregnancies.

Those in the program received extensive education, training, counseling and parenting instruction, researchers said.

But 18 months after entering the program, more than half of the young women participating in it reported that they were pregnant again. And while many of them had found jobs, pregnancies and other family problems prevented them from staying employed for any length of time, leaving them on welfare.

“The results of the demonstration are mixed and they are less than what we have hoped for. . . . The program did not work in the area of repeat childbearing,” said Janet C. Quint, senior research associate for the New York-based Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. and the author of the report.

Over an 18-month period, the study followed 2,300 teen-age mothers who applied for the program at 16 locations in 10 states. With centers in Chula Vista, Inglewood and San Jose, California had one of the highest levels of participation.

New Chance, which started in most states in 1989, was designed for teen-age welfare mothers because they are the segment of the welfare population considered most likely to spend their life on public assistance. Its goal was to move them away from welfare dependency and toward self sufficiency through an intensive program which included instruction in contraception and family planning as well as academic courses aimed at earning high school equivalency certificates.

Ultimately, officials hoped the services provided by New Chance would improve the lives of the young mothers and their children as well.

The program was directed at a segment of the welfare population considered among the most disadvantaged. To participate, mothers had to be 16 to 22 years old, had to be receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children and had to have given birth as teen-agers. The average participant in the program was 19 and had given birth to her first child before the age of 17. The vast majority were unmarried high school dropouts.

Researchers emphasized that the report released today provided only short-term results and said they hope that a follow-up study to be completed in 1996 will show that the long-range impact of the program was more effective.

But they acknowledged that the short-term results clearly demonstrated that there are no quick fixes.

Robert C. Granger, senior vice president for the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. and project director of the New Chance research, said the data gathered so far provides valuable guidance for state and federal officials who are proposing welfare reforms.

He said it shows that the Clinton Administration and many states have correctly targeted teen-age pregnancy as a problem that must be attacked in any welfare reform plan.

“We think that it makes a lot of sense to focus on adolescent pregnancy and to come up with some ways of not having young unwed mothers have babies when they are ambivalent about having those babies or don’t want those pregnancies,” he said.

Quint said the high number of repeat pregnancies has perplexed both the researchers and the operators of the program and neither has found a clear explanation for it.

She said many of the programs have since beefed up their family planning and added more case managers to their staff who could provide follow-up counseling for mothers after they left New Chance.