Healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) grantees often face implementation challenges, such as difficulty in recruiting and encouraging participants to participate in services. To help address these common challenges, HMRE practitioners should engage in continuous quality improvement (CQI) to identify the most pressing challenges and test potential strategies designed to address them. However, accessing the information and resources needed to inform the CQI process may not always be feasible for all HMRE grantees. This guide is designed to bridge this gap by providing a set of promising approaches and accompanying strategies to address common challenges within the context of HMRE service delivery. The guide highlights strategies that practitioners can adopt, refine, and test through their own CQI process and ultimately use to improve their HMRE services. It was produced as part of the Strengthening Implementation of Marriage and Relationship Programs (SIMR) project.

Recognizing fathers’ importance to their families, as well as the difficulties that many fathers with low incomes face supporting their children, the federal government has supported responsible fatherhood (RF) programs for more than a decade. Many questions, however, remain about how to best serve fathers and their families. To identify current gaps in the knowledge base for Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood programming, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) undertook the Fatherhood, Relationships, and Marriage — Illuminating the Next Generation of Research (FRAMING Research) project. The project convened a series of technical work groups to discuss issues related to research on RF programs. This brief describes the third work group session’s meeting discussion, which focused on fostering trust among fathers who participate in RF programs and recruiting and retaining young fathers in services.

Many families struggle to meet their basic needs, a challenge that may be exacerbated by increased costs of living, widening income inequality, and ongoing economic uncertainty. Upward economic mobility across generations remains limited; children who grow up in the United States today are much less likely than children born in the 1940s to earn more income than their parents. Research suggests that two-generation (2Gen) approaches can help interrupt the economic and social barriers to many families’ economic mobility and increased well-being and carry long-term benefits. This report provides a current data snapshot of some families in the United States who may be eligible for and benefit from 2Gen supports and services.

Some healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs offer economic stability services in addition to relationship skills education. The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) funds community-based programs that offer HMRE and economic stability services as part of their Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grant programs. This Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation brief offers lessons for HMRE program providers seeking to integrate HMRE and economic stability services and examines two social service agencies that received federal grants from OFA —The Parenting Center in Fort Worth, Texas, and Family and Workforce Centers of America in St. Louis, Missouri—to design and implement such integrated programs.

Almost 16% of men in the U.S. report having a mental health problem, yet only around half receive treatment. This crisis in care has far-reaching consequences for the entire family, as fathers with mental health issues tend to have lower-quality co-parenting relationships and children who struggle to regulate their emotions and behaviors. The National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse will host a webinar on March 8, 2023 from 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. ET about the mental health needs of fathers and practices and resources to help address them. By attending the webinar, participants will learn:

• The impact of paternal mental health on parenting, children, and relationships
• How the COVID-19 pandemic has opened the door to more discussion about the importance of mental health and treating mental health issues
• Barriers to treatment and ways to overcome them
• Where fathers can access work- and community-based mental health services

The Aspen Institute’s Ascend initiative will host a national briefing on March 2, 2023 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET which will cover an analysis of families with low incomes across the country. Looking at children and the adults in their lives together, this new comparative analysis of 2011 and 2021 Census data will illuminate the diversity of families, examining single and dual parent households and families with young children and ones with at least one child under the age of 18, as well as young parent and multigenerational households.

Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) programming is designed to teach participants how to communicate effectively, manage conflict, identify signs of an unhealthy relationship, and other skills important for developing and maintaining healthy relationships. While research evaluating HMRE programming effectiveness shows that programming often has positive impacts, research also points out that many program participants face additional life stressors that may interfere with healthy couple relationships and family functioning. This brief uses data from a sample of Hispanic couples who participated in an HMRE evaluation to show the prevalence of some of the key economic, demographic, and personal stressors that research identifies as predictive of relationship quality. Some of the key findings of the study reflect that some stressors cannot be eliminated by HMRE programs, and that other stressors (e.g., housing hardship or poor health) can be addressed by utilization of other social service programs, such as TANF, Medicaid, or subsidized housing.

Strengthening Families and Help Me Grow (HMG) are closely aligned efforts focused on improving outcomes in early childhood. This brief describes how the HMG Model currently aligns with the Strengthening Families Approach and Protective Factors Framework and how HMG affiliates are currently using Strengthening Families. The brief also illustrates how the introduction of goal concordant care might enhance HMG affiliates’ ability to support families in attaining their goals for their children, as well as how this interacts with the promotion of families’ protective factors.

In recent years, many healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) programs serving couples with low incomes have offered participants economic stability services in addition to traditional HMRE programming focused on relationship skills. The Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) evaluation included an impact study of Empowering Families, an HMRE program with integrated economic stability services for couples with low incomes raising children together. The program was implemented by The Parenting Center, a community-based social services provider in Fort Worth, Texas. Empowering Families’ core service was an eight-session workshop that taught relationship skills integrated with content on employment and financial literacy. The program supplemented this workshop with one-on-one employment counseling and financial coaching services.