Parents and Children Together: Design and Implementation of Two Healthy Marriage Programs

Key Findings:

• Relationship education workshops, which included both married and unmarried couples, were well attended. Combining data across programs, 85 percent of couples attended at least one session, and about 65 percent attended half or more of the sessions. 
• Strong participation may have resulted from programmatic efforts to promote attendance and restricting eligibility to only couples who reported being in a committed relationship.
• Both programs offered low-intensity services designed to improve participants’ economic well-being, including a brief stand-alone job and career advancement workshop. One also integrated job and career advancement content into the relationship skills workshop. 
• Participation in the job and career advancement services was low, which may have reflected couples’ limited needs or preferences. At enrollment, both partners were unemployed in only 13 percent of couples across the two programs. Although earnings were generally low, it is possible that in many couples one of the partners was not seeking work.