Good morning, Councilmember Bonds, committee members, and staff. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today at the Public Hearing for Bill B26-0474, the Pathways to Prosperity for Young Parents Pilot Amendment Act of 2025.
My name is Mary Katherine West. I am a policy analyst at DC Action and a Ward 1 resident.
DC Action works to break down barriers that prevent children and youth from reaching their full potential, using research, data, and a racial equity lens. We are also home to the Context Team, a group of young parent advisors whose lived experiences directly inform our policy advocacy. Their insights shape my testimony today.
First, I would like to thank Councilmember Pinto and her staff for recognizing young parents as a priority population. Young parents want to work, and the current programming isn’t meeting young parents’ needs or the barriers that they face to access or sustain employment.
In 2023, DC Next conducted a survey of young parents showing that over 64% of participants wanted to work more hours, and 35% of those not employed were looking for work, showing that young parents had motivation to work, but faced barriers. Removing barriers and expanding access to economic stability and mobility will positively impact the development and well-being of young parents and their children.
However, for this pilot to succeed, it must be designed around the realities young parents face, not just employment access, but the conditions that make sustained employment possible.
Recommendations for Strengthening the Proposed Pilot Program
Any program that intends to help young parents entering the workforce must first understand that young parents are fiercely dedicated to the well-being of their children.
Based on the experiences and feedback from young parents in DC, coupled with external literature describing the Chicago Young Parent Program (CYPP), a Chicago-based employment program for parenting youth, recommendations to strengthen this program design include:
- Clear eligibility and enrollment criteria that prioritize young parents with the highest barriers
This Act’s proposal states that the Department of Employment Services (DOES) will work with partner agencies to identify and refer participants, but does not specify how young parents will ultimately be selected to fill the 100 pilot spots.
Application-based processes or first-come, first-served processes may reinforce the same barriers to the program that young parents face in employment or other District services. These barriers include housing insecurity or homelessness, language accessibility, documentation status, educational attainment, or interaction with the juvenile justice system.
To ensure equity, DOES should work with community-based organizations and providers that support young parents to develop a referral or selection process that prioritizes and supports young parents facing the highest barriers.
- Guaranteed, wrap-around supports for participants, including child care, transportation, and ongoing career mentorship and service navigation support based on a family’s baseline level of need
The bill currently states, “DOES may provide additional supportive services to participants, including transportation assistance, workforce counseling, job readiness training, and access to childcare resources, as necessary to support successful completion of the program.” If supports are optional only, parents who face the highest barriers will not succeed.
These supports should include access to child care, reliable, accessible, and affordable transportation support, and ongoing case management and career mentorship.
Access to reliable and high-quality child care is a central factor for young parents to maintain employment. One challenge parents discuss is finding work that aligns with the hours of child care centers. In a focus group discussion, one young parent said,
“Even if you find child care, it doesn’t match up. You have to go to work at 7, but the school will open at like 8:35, and it ends at like 3. How am I supposed to do that?”
Without reliable, schedule-aligned child care, employment opportunities will remain out of reach. This program must ensure access to high-quality child care that fits participants’ work schedules and must partner with employers to align expectations accordingly.
Quotes from our focus groups highlight their commitment and the centrality of reliable child care, and flexibility will be key to any pilot or permanent program design as young parents may have to leave work to care for sick children:
- One parent shares that it is a challenge when jobs are “not very flexible with your kid’s sick.” She says, “If my baby is sick, I don’t know what to tell you.”
- Another shared, “I’m pretty sure most of us be our own support… My family got jobs and stuff, and they just can’t up and like, oh, I could go get your child.”
“So I would say jobs for more flexible schedules. Or jobs that let you make your schedule, as long as you meet the hours that you sign up for… So I’m just saying, like, jobs that let you make your schedule flexible. Schedule to work around your child.”
- Another young parent said her manager was the key to her success at work: “My manager, she understands what I’m going through, so it’s like, I tell her, like, if I gotta leave work early, to go get my son she will understand.”
In addition to childcare, many young parents need support with transportation, particularly for participants who do not live near public transit. Young parents reflected on programs that offered a SmartTrip card, but this did not meet some young people’s needs when their home or the job was not near accessible public transit.
Mentorship and navigation from a community or social service provider will also be critical. From 2016-2019, the Chicago Young Parent Program (CYPP) for parents 16-24 years old worked to meet the “career, education, and developmental needs of young participants and their young children” through part-time job placement at a Head Start center, mentoring, bi-monthly home visiting, and weekly enrichment sessions and socializations led by mentors.
The program measured participant needs at baseline, categorizing needs into high-needs “stabilization”, medium as “intervention”, or those with fewer needs as “support/prevention”. Identifying a baseline enabled mentors to set and progress through reasonable goals. Researchers report that the flexibility enabled by the different pathways and “wrap-around interconnected supports was key to the program’s success.
If the District were to implement a pilot program for young parents, wrap-around supports should be administered by trusted community-based organizations that have demonstrated effectiveness in supporting District families. These support workers can help young parents address the barriers they face to working and serve as a trusted liaison between the young person and the program or employer if necessary.
- Required employer training and expectations for supporting young parents
The proposal outlines a 50% wage subsidy to employers to hire a young parent for a year, with the “commitment to consider the voucher employee for permanent employment at the conclusion of the subsidy period.” This provides opportunity for young parents to get their foot in the door to long-term employment, but consideration alone will not propel a young parent toward a more financially stable future.
Entry to a job is not synonymous with sustaining a job or accessing full-time employment beyond the program year. Program evaluators of the Chicago-based young parent program documented persistent barriers to young parents and recommended that, for future implementation, programs align expectations with employers and establish communication with the program if participants face challenges on the site after they continue to face employment barriers.
For instance, many young parents have limited support from family or friends, and are responsible if their child is sick, which can result in having to leave early or miss work to care for a sick child or take them to the doctor.
Employers who work with the program should be trained to understand their commitment to supporting the parent through the year-long process and helping them develop skills to grow their career. The District should include accountability measures for the employers to be responsive to the needs of young parents to complete the program and exit successfully to a career.
- Defined success metrics beyond job placement alone, including employment retention beyond the duration of the program, connections to educational next steps or career pathways, and family-sustaining wages and income
While employment was originally a central goal of the Chicago-based young parent program, the researchers found that finding employment was a complex process for young parents. Some participants were pregnant or had recently given birth, were completing school, or were managing their children’s health or disabilities that temporarily prevented them from seeking full-time employment.
After completing the program, almost half of the participants were employed, and only 16% by the Head Start Center where they had been placed. Researchers document that mentors played a critical role in supporting participant engagement and helping them think about their engagement and career goals, and the steps needed to achieve them.
Throughout the year, DOES or the program navigators should provide career navigation support and empowerment to help them progress on their goals, whether that is connection to additional education or a permanent position, even if not with their original employer. Participants should have the skills to identity the skills they have gained and understand how to share these skills on a resume or apply them in other settings.
DOES should recruit employers that will pay young parents wages that will support their families during and beyond the program year.
Young Parents in the District Deserve Supportive and Holistic Programs
Opportunities for long-term economic stability and mobility are key for young families to thrive in the District. However, each family will enter the program with a unique set of circumstances and needs at baseline. Access to stable and long-term employment will be interconnected with other barriers and challenges that young parents face.
Young parents’ access to employment needs is unlikely to be fully mitigated without giving sufficient attention to the whole family’s needs. Young parents deserve thoughtful and comprehensive programs that put their experience and success at the forefront, rather than reinforce the same barriers they already face. Without adequate support, young parents could be set up to fail in programs that result in more harm than good.