Executive Summary

The Community Healthy Marriage Initiative (CHMI) is a key component of the demonstration strategy of the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to determine how public policies can best support healthy marriages. Two concepts underlie the CHMI strategy. One is that community coalitions can be an effective vehicle for developing a range of healthy marriage and healthy family activities, including classes that build relationship skills, partnerships with clergy and others, celebration days, and media messages about the value of marriage and healthy families. The second is that communities with a critical mass of such activities can exert positive family impacts on individuals and couples directly through their participation in classes and other services and indirectly through their interactions with friends, family, and others in the community who were themselves influenced by a local marriage-related activity sponsored by the local coalition. The goals of the 1115 healthy marriage initiatives are to achieve child support objectives through healthy marriage activities.

This report focuses on the role of community coalitions in supporting healthy marriage activities and presents a description and analysis of the early implementation of the section 1115 child support1 waiver demonstration in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a city of nearly 190,000 people. This report provides evidence that a local community coalition can leverage sufficient resources to stimulate a substantial amount of marriage-related and family relationship activities at a modest cost. This report does not address the question of impacts on marriage or child support outcomes of participants or others in the community. Healthy Marriages Healthy Relationships’ initial operations should be viewed as a pilot of community approaches to healthy marriage that, given time and available funding, could develop into a full-scale community healthy marriage initiative.

Healthy Marriages Healthy Relationships (HMHR) is a community-based initiative that delivers relationship skills-building services intended to encourage healthy relationships between parents, and between parents and their children, and to further the objectives of child support enforcement by increasing the financial well-being of children in a low-income, urban area of Grand Rapids. The HMHR Project in Grand Rapids was awarded a Child Support Enforcement Demonstration Section 1115 waiver in June 2003 and began operations in October 2003. To examine how HMHR became operational, how it formed and maintained community coalitions, and how it began operations, RTI/Urban Institute staff collected information from several sources, including a site visit in December 2004, monthly project status update calls, a focus group with recent recipients of local marriage- and parenting-education services, and data on individuals participating in HMHR classes (drawn from HMHR’s Management Information System [MIS]). Because HMHR is still at a relatively early stage of operation, and some of the report’s material is based on operations as of December 2004, readers should view this report as providing a snapshot of the constantly evolving and developing community initiative.

Developing the HMHR Project

Any section 1115 community child support healthy marriage initiative is likely to face several challenges. The local sponsor must convince potential community partners that HMHR-sponsored activities related to marriage, relationships, and child support and are worth pursuing. In addition, local sponsors must raise sufficient local resources to match Federal funds; consult with domestic violence organizations; establish healthy marriage and child support objectives; stimulate the supply of and demand for HMHR classes; and publicize the initiative in the media, through political leaders, and with special events.

HMHR developed in the context of prior work in Grand Rapids on marriage and relationship education services. The Grand Rapids area has a longstanding Community Marriage Policy that promotes premarital education and sponsors relationship skills-based education. The preexisting initiative, called Healthy Marriage Grand Rapids (HMGR), has been a visible presence in the community since 1997 and represents the first community coalition effort to encourage marriage and healthy relationships in the Grand Rapids area. Through this pre-HMHR initiative, Grand Rapids had already developed resources for supporting healthy marriages including expertise, research, and relationships with key leaders in the community and experience in offering trainings on healthy relationships curricula to churches as well as professionals. HMHR, building from the coalition, support, and experience of HMGR, focused marriage education efforts on the low-income community within Grand Rapids.

Implementing the HMHR initiative required building new networks, engaging new leaders, and creating new models of service delivery. The participation of partners from the target communities was considered essential, as was building the trust necessary for an effective effort. Project designers recognized that although HMGR had substantial resources and experience in developing a healthy marriage network, City Vision, a local intermediary organization, provided the essential access to key people and organizations from the target communities that HMHR needed. The core partnership between HMGR and City Vision was based on a shared trust and common goals, and the relationships to be built with community partners were also to be founded in trust. The partner organizations are called Institutions of Trust (IOTs). This reflects not only the trust that the partners share as organizations, but also the fact that the community-based organizations have the trust of their community, which facilitates the connection between ideas that come from outside the community and their potential relevance to the communities. All 10 partner IOTs are faith-based institutions.

In addition to building relationships with the 10 partner institutions, the focus of the initiative in its first year and a half has been on developing a menu of service options with the partners, recruiting participants, training facilitators, and beginning and tracking service delivery for the chosen services.

HMHR Recruiting and Participants

Initially, HMHR relied on the 10 IOT partner organizations to recruit participants from within their clientele. Local partner site directors and site coordinators, as they became invested in and aware of the various services available, began to see specific needs for these skills within their neighborhoods and clients. Word-of-mouth recruitment from someone known to the potential participant was seen as crucial for new program offerings, particularly those relating to relationships. The MIS data reveals this strategy has been successful. As of September 2005, participants reported hearing about HMHR from three major sources: pastor of their church (32 percent), a community or neighborhood agency (22 percent), or a friend or family member (20 percent).

The success of this strategy over 5 years should enable HMHR to reach its goal of 2,500 participants. In order to maintain participation levels HMHR also has broader recruitment efforts. These efforts have led to discussions with several local public service agencies under the Department of Human Services like the Family Independence Agency and Child Welfare who provide services to HMHR’s target population. Potential participants, who may not already be affiliated with one of the 10 community partners, will be linked with the IOT nearest to where they live or have previously sought services. In addition to direct recruitment, referrals and outreach to other agencies, HMHR is planning a comprehensive media campaign to be implemented by a private communications firm. By using a targeted media strategy, HMHR will build upon the word of mouth and service agency recruitment strategy to increase knowledge about marriage and relationship services.

The HMHR target population is low-income population, which is generally hard to reach. The IOT recruitment strategy has allowed HMHR to successfully provide services to their stated target population. To date, HMHR has registered a total of 687 people for classes, out of which there were 51 couples. As of September 2005, 645 of those registered had taken at least one class. Only 25 percent of clients reported being married, implying a high proportion of single parents being served by HMHR. Approximately 78 percent of clients served by HMHR were female, and 59 percent of clients were between 25 and 44 years of age. More than half of the participants reported having at least a high school diploma, and 80 percent of clients reported being a parent of a minor child. Nearly 53 percent of clients served by HMHR were “not working” at the time of intake. This proportion was less for men; only 40 percent reported “not working.” Given such a high proportion of unemployed clients, it is not surprising that 60 percent of the population also reported household earnings of $15,000 or less per year (half reported an income less than $5,000). Of all HMHR participants, 283 (approximately 44 percent) were identified in the child support data base as having some involvement with the child support system.

HMHR Services and Delivery

Recruiting potential participants is an important step in delivering services such as Family Wellness and other classes. Developing a reputation within the community and having participants refer their friends to HMHR activities is also very important. Therefore, HMHR places a great deal of emphasis on developing strong services that are relevant to participants. HMHR contracts with class facilitators, whom they train and monitor. Class facilitators currently offer classes through the 10 partner institutions. HMHR has four main service offerings at this time. The initial service offering was Family Wellness: Survival Skills for Healthy Families (Family Wellness Associates, n.d.). Currently, following the 6-week Family Wellness session, follow-up and coaching is available. This follow-up was developed after partner sites reported that Family Wellness participants were requesting more services. Parenting Wisely, a curriculum on CD-ROM, is used in partner organizations with groups of people who are interested in improving their parenting skills but who may be unable to commit to 6 weeks of class. A recently adapted version of How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk(ette)2 is being offered to help participants make better choices of partners. This curriculum has been especially effective with younger participants.

Reducing barriers to participation in services has been a serious focus of HMHR. Specific actions taken that demonstrate the value that HMHR places on the time of the participants include providing food, child care, and transportation as needed. The tailoring of each curriculum, the menu of service options available, and the constant dialogue with the partners has been a key to the support HMHR has garnered. When partner organizations report a need in the community, HMHR has been particularly successful in adapting to meet those needs.

Efforts to reduce barriers to participation and to make classes relevant to participants appear to have been effective. Six hundred and forty five participants took at least one class and the average number of classes attended was approximately four per person. Fifty-seven percent of participants have completed the 6-week session, although this figure may be an underestimate as many participants in the data are currently engaged in a session that is ongoing.

The services HMHR provides have resonated with participants. Feedback from participants has been very positive. Participants in Family Wellness said the class content had a lot to offer and they found them very useful and relevant to their lives. One said enthusiastically, “I think this is an excellent program and more people should do it.” In particular, they found the classes that addressed communication to be the most helpful. Communication; listening skills; and negotiation between partners, parents and kids, and among extended family members are key lessons in the Family Wellness curricula. One participant said he had started a family night—when all members of his household gather to talk—as a result of participating in the program. Others said they thought they had become more active listeners since attending classes.

In order to address the terms of their waiver grant and to ensure that participants have access to services that they need, HMHR has made a concerted effort to develop relationships with other community service providers. HMHR works with the state Family Independence Agency and with the project officer for the Section 1115 waiver to help address child support goals. Relationships with local hospitals and in-hospital paternity establishment staff have been developed to facilitate referrals to HMHR. The local Friend of the Court (FOC) partnership was established to help provide participants with a way of addressing child support needs. The FOC pilot links program participants that have certain kinds of child support-related problems with a liaison from FOC who can answer questions and help to work toward solutions.

Building relationships with local domestic violence organizations has also been a part of the early implementation of the project, to assure that, to the extent possible, relationships being developed are healthy ones. HMHR project leaders forged relationships with two local domestic abuse organizations; Safe Haven Ministries, and the YWCA. Safe Haven Ministries has provided assistance in training class moderators and developing protocols for how to assess and discuss domestic violence with participants.

Leveraging Resources

The ability of lead organizations to leverage community resources is a critical aspect of the CHMI and of the evaluation. Cooperation among community actors is vital for reaching sufficient numbers of people to affect community norms. With the assistance of churches, neighborhood nonprofit organizations, state and local government agencies, and volunteer couples, the CHMI can recruit and provide marriage-related services to many individuals and couples and can publicize messages about the value of healthy marriages and family relationships and good parenting.

Recognizing the importance of leveraging resources, HMHR has developed an effective strategy for reaching large numbers of participants within low-income neighborhoods of Grand Rapids. The coalition developed through HMGR also supports HMHR, and the partners have created their own network within the community. With their partners, HMHR has managed to engage individuals and couples in services at low cost to the Federal government, even at this early stage of implementation. With only about $198,000 per year in Federal funds, HMHR has managed to serve at least 645 participants directly. Using various assumptions and a conservative figure for participants, cost-per-participant has been only about $300 based on Federal outlays. This figure includes many initial start-up costs, like training and setting up recruitment, and will decrease over time as more participants are served. Further, community resources, once mobilized, may enhance the likelihood that the program is sustained after the project period ends.

Drawing on a variety of community resources, obtaining in-kind contributions from the IOTs delivering services and from Pine Rest’s Family Institute, and managing in ways that limit costs, HMHR has been able to provide classes and other services at a very modest cost. While initial indications of potential benefits are promising, and even a modest impact on individuals and couples is likely to yield benefits that outweigh program costs, rigorous analyses of the impacts of services on the community and participants is still needed. As HMHR seeks to improve and increase services and participation, their ability to leverage financial, as well as community resources will be important to their sustained success.

Early HMHR Successes and Challenges

The HMHR demonstration is undertaking the ambitious goal of strengthening marriages and family relationships in low-income areas of Grand Rapids, Michigan. HMHR’s distinctive strategy involved collaboration between an organization with experience in helping middle-class families improve their marriage and relationship skills and 10 community organizations (IOTs) that work closely with low-income populations but have little experience in marriage education and relationship skills training. HMHR used an intermediary organization, City Vision, to build a bridge between HMHR and the IOTs.

This strategy was risky. It required organizations that had little experience dealing with each other to learn to communicate and trust each other in accomplishing a complicated array of tasks, such as choosing a curriculum and developing approaches to make sure that the initiative did not worsen domestic violence. It put a great deal of responsibility on the recruitment and operational capabilities of the IOTs. It meant using facilitators that were not yet trained and not employees of either HMHR or the IOTs. It involved reconciling healthy marriage goals with the goal of making all family relationships healthier, including those with nonresident fathers. It required working with the Title IV-D agency so that HMHR would pursue child support goals in addition to healthy marriage and relationship objectives.

Above and beyond the complications of this collaboration are questions about the underlying strategy. Would individuals and couples actually participate and use the services or would they find the marriage and relationship skills services not especially beneficial? Would the demonstration’s link with child support drive away neighborhood organizations and potential participants? Could a sensible curriculum be developed that worked well for a low-income, mainly minority audience?

Successes

Working with City Vision, HMHR has managed to establish a close working relationship with 10 community organizations in low-income neighborhoods. Gaining consensus on curricula, training, and other issues has been sufficient to allow the development of a number of HMHR classes and other services. For this effort to materialize, HMHR had to listen carefully and sensitively and adapt their strategy based on what the partner organizations reported back. One important example is in choosing and adapting a curriculum, such as the How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk(ette) curriculum.

Bridging the different perspectives has not been easy. In particular, the funding agency’s focus on marriage and child support was not a natural fit with expected community views in neighborhoods serviced by the IOTs. Still, the project leadership has been highly committed to taking the range of perspectives seriously and negotiating among them as effectively as possible. HMHR’s emphasis on process rather than simply outcome was apparently important in achieving these goals.

The IOTs’ connections to other services are important, especially to HMHR’s ability to recruit participants. Potential recruits may come in for other services, like job placement, but end up also accessing marriage/relationship services because of the ease of using services housed in these preexisting organizations. The result is that recruiting becomes a bit more fluid. If an organization like Jubilee Jobs is known in the community and has many people coming to access their services, then this facilitates recruiting. The built-in advantages in recruiting has made it possible for HMHR not to focus on their media campaign (like billboards and radio) as much and instead to focus on a more concerted effort of providing fliers in meetings and various locations and to encourage a less expensive, word-of-mouth effort.

As a result of these and other efforts, the IOTs and HMHR program have been able to generate a number of Family Wellness classes and attract almost 650 people to at least one class, with most participants attending at least four sessions. Moreover, the participants who start generally continue, an indication that participants find the classes useful. These are striking indicators of success at early implementation.

Challenges

Efforts to incorporate child support objectives have been challenging. Most HMHR leaders and partner staff consider child support to be an important support for children and families, but they have been concerned with appearing to be part of the child support enforcement system. The strong fear of and negative perception associated with the child support system that many people in the Grand Rapids community have could engender distrust in the underlying purpose of the initiative, reduce program participation, especially of men, and threaten the goals that HMHR had set out to accomplish. The Friend of the Court partnership is seen as a way to provide child support assistance to participants who are seeking help. To date, HMHR’s approach to incorporating child support has been gentle, yet effective.

While the income and education targeting have been surprisingly good for a program with no income or asset test to determine eligibility, only 22 percent of participants are men, and only one-sixth attend as couples. Attracting more men and couples to the classes will be challenging, since the participant population reflects the neighborhood demographics. For social programs of this kind, retention has been fairly high. However, many participants still do not complete the courses (attend 4 out of 6 classes). It is important to do more to find out why some people do not graduate and whether program improvements might enhance the experience of participants.

HMHR has been very successful in recruiting through IOTs but as the initiative seeks to grow in size it will be very important to concentrate efforts in other recruiting areas. While HMHR has plans to incorporate other local service providers and initiate a media campaign to increase recruiting, these new recruitment spheres are likely to pose individual and unique challenges.

As HMHR continues to grow, build on its menu of services and provide assistance to more people, it will be challenging to maintain a strong feedback mechanism. One of HMHR’s key strengths has been its ability to listen to providers and to adapt to the needs of the community. It will be difficult but important to maintain and upgrade the quality of the classes while expanding recruitment efforts to continue to cover large numbers of potential participants. Learning what is working for individuals will require contacting and listening to the individuals and couples who have used the program.