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Journal Article Many healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood (HMRF) programs that serve adults find it challenging to keep participants engaged in voluntary workshop sessions and help them achieve their desired outcomes. “Adult learning theory” identifies key principles that matter most for adults to learn successfully. In this way, adult learning theory might help HMRF practitioners strengthen adults’ engagement in learning experiences and mastery of program content. This brief highlights five strategies based on adult learning theory that HMRF program developers and facilitators can use to support…
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Journal Article Adult learning theory aims to explain the processes by which adults gain knowledge, skills, and abilities. This paper explores how adult learning theory might inform healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood (HMRF) programming so it can be more successful in supporting family well-being. The first section of the paper provides an overview of the HMRF program context, including participants’ background and skills, the services programs offer, and the common challenges programs face in achieving their desired outcomes. The second section of the paper summarizes the key principles of adult…
Other
The Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) team consists of researchers, curriculum developers, and social service delivery professionals who were funded to research and oversee the development of community-based programs that provide relationship education to married parents. This Toolkit was developed by the SHM team to guide emerging SHM programs as they developed and implemented various aspects of the program design and research agenda — with the goal of helping program operators develop a strong, successful program. Our goal in providing this document for general use is that managers and…
This report describes program design and implementation of two Healthy Marriage programs that are part of the Parents and Children Together evaluation: The Healthy Opportunities for Marriage Enrichment program from The El Paso Center for Children in El Paso, Texas; and the Supporting Healthy Relationships program from University Behavioral Associates in Bronx, New York. The report includes a focus on the job and career advancement services offered by the two grantees, and presents data on enrollment, initial participation, retention, and the amount of services couples received from July 2013…
Brief
This brief provides a general overview of four Responsible Fatherhood (RF) grantees involved in the Parents and Children Together (PACT) Evaluation. The brief: 1) provides a general overview of two approaches to service delivery in fatherhood programs; 2) documents how service delivery is linked to fathers’ characteristics; and 3) describes how service delivery approach may be linked to program participation and retention rates. Data gathered via staff interviews, program observations conducted during site visits in fall 2013; ongoing interactions with leadership at each program; and data on…
In September 2006, the Administration for Children and Families' Office of Family Assistance (OFA) awarded grants to 226 organizations designed to promote healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood. This report summarizes the service models, activities, and preliminary outcomes of a select group of Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grantees that were identified as part of OFA's "Promising Practices" initiative to document programs that show evidence of positive participant outcomes. The first section of the report provides profiles of the following Healthy Marriage grantees: the…
This report discusses findings from an evaluation of eight organizations that implemented the Building Strong Families (BSF) program, a program designed to teach relationship skills to unmarried, romantically-involved couples who were expecting or had recently had a baby. For the evaluation, over 5,000 interested couples were randomly assigned to either a BSF group that could participate in the program or a control group that could not. Data was collected on BSF's impacts on couples about 15 months after they applied for the program, focusing on the stability and quality of the couples'…
This report is a technical supplement to the 15-month impact report for the Building Strong Families (BSF) evaluation, a study that explored the effectiveness of providing services to improve the relationships of unmarried parents. It provides additional detail about the research design, analytic methods, and variable construction that were used for the 15-month analysis. Chapter 1 begins with an overview of the research design. It then describes BSF sample intake procedures, including eligibility determination and the random assignment process. The eight local BSF programs enrolled couples…
This report discusses the implementation of the Building Strong Families (BSF) program in eight organizations. The BSF project was launched in 2002 to develop, implement, and rigorously test voluntary interventions aimed at strengthening the families of unmarried couples with children. BSF programs were implemented by non-profit and public agencies at 12 locations in seven States, and enrolled more than 5,000 volunteer couples, who were randomly assigned by the BSF research team to an intervention or control group. The intervention featured up to 42 hours of multi-couple group sessions led…
Other
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Family Assistance released a toolkit that provides resources to assist programs with implementation of economic stability and workforce development (ESWD) initiatives The primary purposes of this toolkit are to provide programs with practical resources to: help HMRF programs implement ESWD initiatives; inform programs about evidence-informed ESWD practices and tools; and provide programs with a conceptual framework from which they can build a full system of care to move participants along a…
