Marriage and relationship education programs are designed to promote family well-being by helping individuals and couples develop skills and knowledge for stable, good-quality relationships. To support marriage and relationship education, the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) funded three cohorts of healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) grantees— from 2006–2011, 2011–2015, and 2015–2020a,b—to offer services to a range of individuals and couples. This brief describes the characteristics of federally funded HMRE grantees and their implementation strategies. Specifically, it highlights the three cohorts (hereafter referred to as the 2006, 2011, and 2015 cohorts, respectively) in terms of the:
This brief will provide researchers and practitioners with information about ACF’s priorities related to HMRE and describe how the landscape of federally funded HMRE programs has evolved over three cohorts of grantees. It also provides information about the diversity of implementation strategies used by HMRE grantees and the extent to which grantees engage ACF’s priority populations. The details provided are based on our review of federal funding opportunity announcements; grantee profiles; a 2015 HMRE grantee database (FastTRAC)c; data from the Information, Family Outcomes, Reporting, and Management (nFORM) information system used by the 2015 cohort of HMRE grantees; OFA’s website; and other published resources. The amount of information available for each cohort varies, but when possible we provide information for all cohorts and describe how the characteristics have changed over time (see Data and Methods box). The brief concludes with a discussion of future research and evaluation priorities for ACF’s HMRE programming.
There is substantial variation among grantees in terms of the size of the award received, the type of organization, their previous experience with HMRE funding, and the settings in which they deliver services. The information summarized below is based on reports describing the 2006 cohort1, grantee profiles for the 2011 cohort, FastTRAC data, and funding information available through OFA’s website. Among our findings:
This brief was created by the Marriage Strengthening Research & Dissemination Center, a partnership between Child Trends, the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University, and Public Strategies.
Grantees can promote healthy marriages and relationships by engaging in any of eight activities, as defined by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and updated in the Claims Resolution Act of 2010 (see text box below for a list of all HMRE activities, per the legislation). The 2006 and 2011 cohorts had to consider these activities as independent, although they could engage in more than one activity.3,4 That is, programs could only deliver services that fell within the activity selected. For example, parenting skills, financial management, conflict resolution, and job and career advancement activities could only be delivered under a grant that had selected the marriage education, marriage skills, and relationships skills activity (Activity III), but not under a grant that had selected services for engaged couples (Activity IV) or high school students (Activity II). In 2015, grantees were allowed to combine elements of the different activities to accomplish program goals.5 For instance, a grantee could focus on marriage enhancement (Activity V), and could also implement elements under the marriage and relationship education and skills activity (Activity III), such as job and career advancement services, financial management, and mentoring services.
1. Public advertising campaigns on the value of marriage and the skills needed to increase marital stability and health.
2. Education in high schools on the value of marriage, relationship skills, and budgeting.
3. Marriage education, marriage skills, and relationship skills programs that may include parenting skills, financial management, conflict resolution, and job and career advancement.
4. Pre-marital education and marriage skills training for engaged couples and for couples or individuals interested in marriage.
5. Marriage enhancement and marriage skills training programs for married couples.
6. Divorce reduction programs that teach relationship skills.
7. Marriage mentoring programs which use married couples as role models and mentors in at-risk communities.
8. Programs to reduce the disincentives to marriage in means tested aid programs if offered in conjunction with any of the other seven activities.
Only general information on the activities in which grantees engaged was available for the 2006 cohort from a published source.1 For the 2011 and 2015 cohorts, we analyzed information on the specific activities that grantees planned to engage in according to their profiles (for the 2011 cohort) and as recorded in the 2015 HMRE grantee database (FastTRAC). Across the 2006 and 2011 cohorts, grantees engaged (or planned to engage) in all activities; no grantees from the 2015 cohort engaged in activities for public advertising (Activity I) or programs to reduce the disincentives to marriage (Activity VIII). Most grantees engaged in more than one activity.
HMRE grantees target and serve tens of thousands of participants each year. In the 2018–2019 grant year (grant year 4), grantees enrolled more than 18,500 youth, 13,500 individuals, and 6,900 adult couples, according to enrollment data grantees reported through nFORM. Across cohorts, HMRE grantees have offered services to a range of people in different types of relationships and with varying family structures: married and cohabiting couples, expectant couples, non-married couples with young children, and high school aged youth.1 Changes in priority populations over the three cohorts may reflect in part the populations of interest identified in funding opportunity announcements.3-5 We present the populations prioritized by ACF in funding announcements for HMRE grants and describe how priority populations have changed over the three cohorts. We also present available data on grantees’ priority populations as described by 2011 grantees in their profiles and as recorded in the grantee database for the 2015 cohort.
Across cohorts, grantees used a variety of curricula that target different populations, and grantees often used multiple curricula at the same time. Below, we summarize information about the types of curricula used by the 2011 and 2015 cohorts, drawn from 2011 grantee profiles and information recorded in the 2015 HMRE Grantee Database (FastTRAC).
Federally funded HMRE grantees differ in their characteristics and in their implementation approaches. This variation is in part due to a response to different priorities across the three cohorts of grantees and indicates that HMRE programs are reaching a variety of populations in different settings. At the same time, this variation presents opportunities for studying the effectiveness of these programs given the range of program models and implementation approaches used to reach and serve diverse populations. Future research and evaluation can support the design and implementation of HMRE programs by ensuring that HMRE curricula, program models, and implementation approaches are informed by research and tailored to meet the needs of the communities in which they are implemented, and the individuals, couples, and families served.
a Complete details about a 4th cohort of grantees, funded in September 2020, were not available in time to be included in this brief.
b Awards granted in 2006 and 2015 were for five years. Awards granted in 2011 were for three years but grantees received a no-cost extension for an additional year.
c FastTRAC is a database created from reportable profile information about each HMRE grantee funded in 2015 to offer quick and customizable access to grantee information. These data allow OFA and its contractors to identify trends and commonalities among grantees.
d The total annual funding includes grant funding for programming as well as funding for a national resource center (the National Healthy Marriage Resource Center in 2006 and the National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families in 2011 and 2015), research contracts, and other related activities.
e Information obtained from archived grantee lists.
f Information about the percent of 2006 grantees that represented other types of organizations was not detailed in the cited report.
g Information on the types of organizations for the 2011 cohort comes from the grantee profiles.
h Based on Child Trends’ review of topics covered in the most commonly used curricula as described on the curricula’s websites.
i Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) includes the Within My Reach and Within Our Reach curricula.
j Grantees can only use federal HMRE funds for specific approved services mentioned in the HMRE legislation. Each funding opportunity announcement provides information about services that cannot be supported by HMRE funds. For example, the 2015 funding opportunity announcement notes that trauma-informed behavioral health care, mental health treatment, and substance abuse treatment are not allowable uses of grant funds but encourages grantees to partner with public and community-based organizations to provide participants with access to these services.
k These numbers strictly represent the services that were offered by grantees; they do not necessarily reflect client participation.
l ACF requires that all HMRE grantees provide case management services, except in cases where the grantee deemed case management services inappropriate for their proposed program design or population.
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