Eight Pilot Sites Selected for the Supporting Healthy Marriage Project
March 21, 2007
Eight organizations around the country have been selected by the federal Administration for Children and Families (ACF), in conjunction with MDRC, a nonprofit research firm, to run early demonstration programs of voluntary marriage education services for low-income married couples with children, as part of the Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) research project. SHM is the first large-scale, multisite, multiyear, rigorous evaluation of marriage education programs for low-income married couples. The lead agencies at the eight pilot SHM sites are:
- University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida
- Catholic Charities, Wichita, Kansas
- University Behavioral Associates, Bronx, New York
- Public Strategies, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
- Community Prevention Partnership, Reading, Pennsylvania
- Health and Human Services Commission, Austin, Texas
- Becoming Parents Program, Seattle, Washington
- Center for Human Services, Shoreline, Washington
“We are thrilled to be working intensively with a group of agencies so dedicated to improving the lives of low-income families and determining whether marriage education programs will be effective in helping them,” says Sharon Rowser, Vice President at MDRC and Director of Site Development for the SHM project.
During the pilot phase of the SHM demonstration, each emerging site will work with the SHM team to plan and implement a comprehensive intervention that delivers curriculum-based group workshops on marital relationship skills to low-income married couples. Programs will also include links to services that may help low-income couples address barriers to healthy marriage, such as problems with employment, health, or housing insecurity. In addition, the programs will include longer-term marriage education activities that reinforce the relationship skills taught in the core program. All programs will provide for safe disclosure of domestic violence and access to appropriate services in the community for families in which domestic violence is disclosed.
What Is Supporting Healthy Marriage?
Led by MDRC in collaboration with Abt Associates, Child Trends, and Optimal Solutions Group, along with leading experts on marriage, marital education programs, and services for low-income families, Supporting Healthy Marriage is designed to inform program operators and policymakers of the most effective ways to help couples strengthen and maintain healthy marriages.
The SHM project is motivated by research demonstrating that both married adults themselves and children raised by married parents do better on a host of family and child well-being outcomes. Low-income couples face greater challenges to building and maintaining healthy marriages, however. “SHM is a path-breaking chance to test the effectiveness of marriage education programs for a population that currently has very little access to these types of services,” says Virginia Knox of MDRC, the Project Director and co-Principal Investigator for SHM. While an extensive body of research on strengthening marriages exists, this research consists primarily of small-scale studies of typically short-term programs for middle-class couples.
The ultimate goal of SHM is to learn which types of programs most effectively improve marital relationships, reduce marital instability, and benefit children. As programs are implemented, the SHM team will visit each program, interviewing staff and participants to better understand how services are provided and how couples view those services. Over time, researchers will also interview parents and children to learn how they are doing on a range of outcomes. The effects of the programs will be studied using random assignment, in which MDRC will compare a program group of couples who receives SHM services with a control group that does not. This method is widely considered the most reliable way to assess what difference programs make.
“This demonstration is going to provide the most rigorous evidence possible about a critical issue — whether we can design an intervention that helps to stabilize marriages, reduce unhealthy conflict, and ultimately improve the well-being of low-income children,” said MDRC President Gordon Berlin. “If it is successful, it will be an important new approach to improving family stability and child well-being that will change the way we think about social services in the future.”
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