This brief draws on the personal experience of the Project Director for Family Services of Greater Houston in Texas, to offer tips for lobbying a State's legislature for the implementation of marriage preparation and relationship strengthening services. Recommendations include: know your legislators, know the lobbyists, do your homework before you pick up the phone, be specific about the funding you will go after, make an appointment, help write the bill, and review similar bills created in different States and incorporate language from those bills.
There are many opportunities for those in marriage education to work with the business community. Marriage education practitioners may want to partner with businesses to solicit monetary donations for program operations, in-kind donations or to incentivize participation (if their grant allows). Others would like to provide healthy marriage and relationship education services to a company's employees. Once you determine the purpose of your association with the company, you need to be able to communicate effectively with its leadership. The following provides some tips for connecting with…
There are a number of areas that marriage and relationship education program providers must address when designing and implementing a program for Native American communities. There have been a number of lessons learned from Native American cultural experts and program practitioners who have developed culturally relevant marriage education programs. These services can be effective for Native Americans living on reservations and for those who are not.There is great diversity within the Native American community. The various tribes have distinct traditions, customs and languages. This Tip Sheet…
Although both men and women are involved in marriage, relationship matters are often considered the woman's domain. For practitioners offering marriage and relationship education (MRE), this general belief can often make engaging men in your program a challenge. Information is relatively sparse with regard to how men can be engaged in marriage education. There is research on men and commitment, and there are relatively frequent pop culture references to men and marriage regarding infidelity or gender roles, but very few resources are available for married men to support their relationship.…
This small scale survey report evaluates aspects of family learning and its benefits for adult participants and their children, their families and the wider community. Between September 2008 and March 2009, inspectors visited 23 local authority adult and community learning services that were receiving Learning and Skills Council funding for wider family learning, family literacy, language and numeracy, and family learning impact funding. The survey explores a range of delivery models, gives examples of good practice and makes recommendations for improvement.
