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Delaware’s TANF State Plan 10-1-2017 to 9-30-2020

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establish teen pregnancy prevention programs. AAPP plans and activities include: • Statewide leadership to develop a visible, viable structure for mobilizing resources needed to impact the problem. • Data development to develop a methodology to monitor rates in real time. • Public relations efforts to increase community awareness and involvement. • Identifying barriers to teen utilization of family planning services and developing solutions.

The Division of Public Health has the lead responsibility in Delaware to implement initiatives to reduce teen pregnancy. Using the strategies and recommendations presented by AAPP, DPH activities include school-based health centers, family planning clinics, parenting education, and the peer leadership program. The "teen friendly" services provided at Department of Public Health units located at Delaware State Service Centers have resulted in a significant increase in use. In addition, all clients seen in Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic sites receive counseling on family planning, as well as pregnancy prevention supplies.

Based on a report by Adolescent Health Survey Research (AHSR), which used a survey and focus groups with youth and their parents conducted early in 1999 to identify top strategies in pregnancy prevention, Delaware implemented a number of initiatives to prevent subsequent births, including: • Smart Start, an enhanced prenatal program that attempts to decrease low birth weight babies, infant mortality, and maternal mortality, through social service, nutritional, and nursing support to at-risk pregnant women. • Placing pregnancy prevention and family planning telephone numbers on our combined Food Supplement/Cash Assistance/MA/Child Care applications including Planned Parenthood, AAPP, and Delaware Helpline

In addition, family planning and reproductive health services are provided to adults in eight public health locations in Delaware and similar services are provided to adults by Planned Parenthood of Delaware in five locations in the state. Minority populations are targeted through family planning and reproductive health services available at three Federally Qualified Health Centers in Delaware.

These Delaware initiatives to reduce out-of-wedlock births are complemented and strengthened by the policies of TANF which: