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PART II: THE LANDSCAPE
In this portion of the report, we describe key aspects of the landscape of marriage programs that are important to understanding how programs currently operate and how they might operate in the future. The aim is to provide the key components of marriage programs and the important features of the context in which they operate. Again, this set of programs does not include the whole universe of programs that currently exist, nor is it necessarily representative of that universe. So the findings presented in this report are based on impressions of a selection of programs operating in a range of settings and systems and serving a variety of populations.
ENVIRONMENT
It is impossible to understand how programs function without understanding key influences in the environment and how they may affect program development, implementation, and operation. We conceptualize the environment to include all federal, state and local policies, public and private initiatives, funding streams that could support a marriage program, and the cultural and socio-political climate. In our examination of programs around the country, there appear three key aspects of environment of note: funding, community integration, and involvement with marriage initiatives.
Funding
A program’s funding structure, specifically sources of funding, affects the cost of the program to clients, provider flexibility in developing the program, and the stability of the program over time. Programs tend to exhibit one of three types of funding structures.
Mixed Source: This type of program pieces together funding from a variety of sources, including government grants or contracts, foundation grants, client fees, and private donations. These programs are often able to keep costs to clients low, but experience greater instability in funding.
Client Fees: Another type of program relies solely on client fees to cover costs. While with this funding structure programs tend to be more expensive for the client, providers have greater flexibility in the types of services they offer. These providers generally focus on recruiting clients rather than fundraising.
Public Funding: Programs operating in public social service settings rely solely on government funding. Costs to clients in these programs are minimal, but these programs do experience some instability in funding streams. For example, providers of a marriage program in a prison system said that security is the funding priority in prisons. If overall funding is reduced, services like marriage programs are often the first to be cut or eliminated.
Involvement with Healthy Marriage Initiatives
Programs range in their awareness of, connections to, and support for current initiatives to support healthy marriages. Generally, we characterize programs as exhibiting four levels of involvement, ranging from being fully on board with marriage programming initiatives to not being aware that these initiatives exist.
On Board: These programs know about initiatives at the national level, and if occurring, initiatives in their communities. These programs speak or have spoken to national leaders in the marriage movement. They convene meetings of key persons within their organization or within the community to discuss the possibilities of expanding current programs or implementing new programs. These programs are often poised to seek state or local funding should it become available.
Exploration: Programs in this category know about initiatives and are often fairly connected to leaders of initiatives at the national or local level. These programs are exploring whether and how these programs fit with their organizational mission and culture. They may have organized internally, or even at the community level, to discuss a possible fit.
Reservations: Programs in this category also know about initiatives, are sometimes connected to leaders of initiatives, and may have organized internally or within their communities to discuss the possibility of marriage programming within their settings. However, as a result of their discussions, they have significant reservations about offering these services.
Not Aware: These programs are not aware of initiatives at the national or local level. During our discussions, providers of these programs often talked about the potential opportunities and challenges of offering these services, but it is unknown to us whether these conversations continued.
Integration in the Community
Programs vary in the extent to which they are integrated in their communities. We characterize levels of integration in terms of the extent of a program’s history in the community, leadership roles and outreach, and collaborative networks.
High: Programs with a high level of integration have a long history in the community and are well known by members of the community. These programs take leadership roles in offering new services and creating collaborative networks. They also usually do extensive outreach in their recruiting efforts, use of community assessments, and training of other community providers.
Medium: These programs possess some awareness of other community programs and activities and occasionally collaborate with other programs. These programs tend not to lead community initiatives, but may attend meetings or participate.
Low: These programs tend to be fairly self-contained, usually free-standing operations. They have some knowledge of other community activities, but collaboration is usually minimal and resources tend to be focused on internal operations. These programs are sometimes new to their communities and are just beginning to integrate.
SETTING
The setting is the location where the program is delivered and generally the organizational context in which the program operates. Four aspects of setting appear to be salient factors to understanding how marriage programs are implemented and operate: organizational structure, collaboration, staffing, and services.
Organizational structure
Organizational structure describes how the program is set up. For example, is the program a sole operation or is the program operating within a system that shapes program functions? Does the program have satellite offices or was the program part of a joint venture between two agencies? Understanding these distinctions is critical to understanding currently how programs operate, but also how they might be implemented in a variety of structures.
Free Standing: A single program where operations are not enmeshed within a larger operation or system characterizes this structure. These programs tend to be not-for-profits and for-profit programs offering services in an office building or self-contained structure. For example, marriage programs can operate in office suites or couples’ homes. Free-standing programs may offer other programs than just marriage services. We talked with several programs that offered multiple services, like parenting, literacy, or public health services, but these programs were not embedded in a larger system of programs.
Embedded: Embedded programs operate within some type of system or setting that influences the operations of the program. For example, programs in prisons, extension offices, or through the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) system are affected by the rules and regulations of those systems. For instance, it can be difficult in prisons to obtain clearance for spouses of inmates to attend marriage programs. Programs in churches are embedded in a larger system of religious beliefs and protocol, which can affect the type of intervention the program offers. Specifically, the church may require the program to incorporate a particular set of religious beliefs.
Satellites: These programs have a base office from which operations are centralized and satellite offices in which services are also delivered. For example, the Lutheran and Catholic Social Services programs we spoke with were often structured with a central office and a variety of regional offices. Similarly, marriage programs that use a support group type model may have a central headquarters that then monitors the development of programs around the country.
Joint Effort: Programs conceived and implemented by the joint efforts of two agencies or organizations fall into this category. For example, we talked with the provider of a program that was developed through a joint effort between a hospital and a YMCA. The hospital contributed funding to the construction of a new wellness center at the YMCA, with the goal of providing a variety of health and wellness classes through the YMCA. The marriage program is held within this wellness center. Similarly, one program we looked at was developed through a joint effort between Catholic Charities, a hospital, and a local parish.
Collaboration
Programs exhibit a variety of collaborative relationships. Programs collaborate with universities, public agencies, court systems, churches, schools, and other community providers. They collaborate to develop curricula, recruit student interns, conduct program evaluation, share space, recruit new clients, avoid service duplication, develop new services, fundraise, and provide training. These relationships display varying levels of formality.
Informal Collaboration: This type of collaboration includes, but is not limited to, meetings, serving on boards, associations, phone conversations, referrals, and sharing space. For example, programs develop relationships with schools, churches, and daycare centers to attain space to provide their services. Providers also report serving on boards for other organizations or participating in community alliances or associations. Programs also develop relationships with local universities to recruit interns.
Formal Collaboration: Collaboration of this type includes efforts to provide services in a common location or with joint staff and is often characterized by a contractual relationship or memorandum of understanding between the groups. For example, a marriage program we looked at collaborates with a hospital providing prenatal services to also offer marriage services to expecting couples. Another example is an extension program that collaborates with Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition programs in the state to provide food and nutrition services.
Staffing
Provider backgrounds and credentials vary substantially. Generally we encountered five types of professionals offering these services. While some providers fall into more than one category, this typology provides a general sense of the different backgrounds providers bring to their work.
Family Life Educators: These providers have backgrounds in family and consumer sciences, family studies, or home economics and are trained to provide educational services to families and individuals.
Mental Health: These providers have backgrounds in psychology, psychiatry, or counseling and are trained to provide therapeutic services to families and individuals.
Medical: These providers are nurses or medical doctors who are trained to provide health care services and education to families and individuals.
Social Work: These providers have backgrounds in social work and are trained to deliver social services in order to assist families and individuals in a variety of aspects of their lives.
Ministerial: These providers have backgrounds in theology, family ministry, and ministerial counseling. They are trained to assist families using an approach grounded in a particular set of religious beliefs.
Services
The programs we observed tend to fall on a continuum in terms of the services they currently offer and how those services relate to marriage programming. Understanding this continuum lays the foundation for later assessment of whether and how marriage programming might fit in particular settings depending on the services they currently offer.
As illustrated in figure 2, programs range from providing only marriage or relationship services to providing none of these services, with several degrees of variation in between.
[D] |
Just Marriage: These programs focus only on providing marriage and relationship skills, either through couples counseling or classes for couples.
Marriage & Therapy: These programs offer marriage programs in addition to individual therapeutic services.
Marriage Plus: In the middle of the spectrum, these programs offer marriage services and other services not necessarily related to the marriage. For example, a program operating through the TANF system is providing marriage services in addition to employment services.
General Family Support: The primary focus of these programs is to provide supports to individuals and families, which may or may not include services that are specifically related to marriage and relationships. For example, programs serving low-income families often fall into this category. These programs provide services that support families, like job training, money management classes, and assistance getting loans, but are not necessarily providing relationship classes. Similarly, programs providing home visiting services to expecting mothers may touch on relationships in their curricula, but they are not providing specific marriage services.
Other Services: These programs are not currently providing any type of relationship programming. For example, we spoke with a municipal health service that offered HIV and STD testing and counseling, investigation of animal bites and rabies education, reporting of communicable diseases, immunizations, maternal and child health home visits, and pregnancy testing, but not services specific to marriage or necessarily directly related to family support. We did not talk with many programs like this, as it was difficult to attain meetings with programs that could not easily see the relevance of marriage programming to their work.
INTERVENTION
The intervention is a treatment involving some face-to-face interaction with the client population. Four aspects of the intervention are important to understand when considering the current operations or future implementation of marriage programs: curriculum, dosage, format, and approach.
Curriculum
Providers give specific reasons for selecting the curriculum they did, such as it is researched-based, will appeal to men, or it can be easily adapted. Providers report selecting curricula that are not too “touchy feely”; at the same time, other providers report specifically selecting a curriculum because it explores family of origin or other emotional issues for couples. Providers may develop their own curricula or patch together a curriculum from a variety of sources. For example, extension offices employ a network of specialists to develop and continually update curricula.
Adaptations may be made to the selected curriculum to meet the specific needs of the population being served. Providers adapt curricula by shortening the length of the intervention, reordering the components, changing the language, or adding in their own material or material from other curricula. The result is a field characterized by the wide use of a variety of “hybrid” curricula.
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Dosage
Dosage of the programs varies and tends to range from two hours to multiple days. In determining the dosage to offer, providers
consider a variety of factors, like couple
schedules, child care issues, cost, and client
willingness to come to longer programs. One
provider reported offering a four-hour intervention
that always concluded with couples wanting more
class time. She said she knew if she provided a
longer intervention no one would come. When
follow-up with clients occurs, it is informal, usually
happening during random encounters or social
events sponsored by the programs. Or follow-up
could occur as part of efforts to collect client
satisfaction data.
Format
Programs employ a wide variety of formats.
Selection of a particular format is often driven by
the curriculum, the background and approach of
the provider, and what the setting can
accommodate. For example, providers with a
therapeutic background often provide one-on-one
individual counseling, while providers without this
background tend to provide classroom-based
programs. We identify and describe three of the
most commonly observed formats below:
Couple & Therapist: This format involves individual sessions with a counselor, therapist, or priest to discuss relationship issues. Providers of these sessions may employ a skill-based or therapeutic approach. This format tends to be more interactive, with the couple or individual sharing information with the provider and the provider providing observations and feedback. Programs that fall into this category include mentor programs, home visiting programs, premarital programs in which couples meet individually with a ministerial provider, or therapeutic programs that provide individual and couples counseling. Therapeutic providers tend to use a particular approach, like family systems theory, in providing these services. Ministerial providers may use marital inventories as a springboard for their discussions. Home visiting and mentor programs may use a curriculum to ensure a certain set of topics is covered.
Classroom: In this format an instructor offers a service to multiple couples. These sessions tend to be skills-based, as it is difficult to address therapeutic issues in this format. Individuals and couples may have different needs that cannot or should not be addressed by a group. When this format is utilized, providers tend to employ a mix of interactive and didactic techniques. They present material and then offer activities around which the couples and the group interact. Homework is also commonly assigned in these types of programs. Programs that fall into this category generally include all premarital and marital enhancement classes. These programs are usually curriculum-based.
Support group: This format brings together a group of participants to discuss particular topics with the guidance of a trained or lay facilitator. These groups are highly interactive, relying on the participants to generate the discussion. Programs in this category may or may not follow a particular curriculum or set of discussion topics.
Approach
Providers bring a variety of approaches to the interventions they deliver, which, as would be expected, generally reflect their backgrounds and the types of services they provide. When considering implementing marriage programming on a larger scale, it is essential to understand the variety of approaches and how they compare and contrast. There are three aspects of approach to consider: perceived reasons for needing the intervention, focus of the intervention, and orientation of the intervention.
Reasons for the Intervention: Providers offer different reasons for the problems people experience in their daily lives, which in turn appears related to the type of intervention they offer.
Relationships— One approach focuses on relationships as central to all other problems families and individuals face. For example, one provider talked about a group of women receiving welfare and perceived that most of them had experienced a problematic relationship that had derailed their educational success, ability to maintain employment, or raise their children.
Human capital— A second approach suggests that problems people face stem from deficits in human capital. For example, some providers believe low-income men and women do not marry because their potential mates lack the education, job training, and income to be desirable partners. They believe these individuals have not acquired the necessary human capital, not because they are not married, but because they have not received the supports to do so.
Basic needs— A third approach asserts that you cannot teach relationship skills to a couple that cannot feed their children and does not have a safe and stable place to live. Providers of this group believe that if a family can meet their basic needs that will help them address other issues in their lives, and as a result, their relationships will be stronger.
Focus: Providers also vary in whether they think an intervention should be focused on the couple, start with the child, or involve the whole family.
Couple— Most programs target the intervention at the couple. These programs focus on teaching the couple how to improve their relationship with each other.
Child--Providers serving low-income families say one way to engage low-income parents is around their children. This group believes interventions would be most effective if focused on helping parents help their child, suggesting to parents that one way of doing that is to build a better relationship with each other. Moreover, some providers who offer parenting classes believe there are notable similarities between the skills taught in parenting classes and those taught in marriage classes. They propose programs that blend marriage and parenting skills.
Family— These interventions are targeted on the whole family. Providers of these types of programs often subscribe to a family systems perspective, which views the family as a unit and uses systems thinking to describe the interactions in the unit.
Orientation: Providers vary in their beliefs about whether interventions should be skills-focused or more therapeutic. Most common is the view that the two orientations complement each other. For example, therapy is important to addressing the deeper issues a couple faces, yet having good relationship skills can help couples address these deeper issues. Similarly, possessing an understanding of one’s deeper issues makes it easier to use relationship skills.
CLIENTS
The client population is the person(s) the program is serving. A look at client populations also includes the identification or referral to programs of various demographic groups, like low-income families, or groups served by particular programs, like the child welfare population. Three aspects of the client population provide insights into the current operation and future implementation of marriage programs: populations served, attendance, and target stage.
Populations Served
Marriage programs do not currently appear to reach low-income populations. Many programs, however, do exist to serve higher-income groups. Distinctions between program type and population served essentially set up two universes of programs (see table 2), those that are “marriage ready” and those that are “population ready.”
| Marriage Programming | No Marriage Programming | |
|---|---|---|
| Middle- to High-income Population | "MARRIAGE READY" | |
| Low-Income Population | "POPULATION READY" |
Marriage Ready: In this universe of programs, marriage programming already exists, but not necessarily for low-income populations. Programs doing work specific to marriage and relationships generally serve middle- to upper-income populations. Sometimes a marriage program is embedded in a setting that offers other types of services to low-income populations, yet the marriage program itself usually does not serve these populations.
Population Ready: Programs in this universe serve low-income populations, but marriage programming is not part of the menu of services. These programs focus on providing services to meet families’ basic needs or build individuals’ human capital.
Expanding the reach of marriage programs to low-income populations presents future developers of marriage programming with two choices. One, programs that already provide marriage services can be extended and adapted to reach low-income populations. Or two, programs working with low-income populations can add marriage programming to their provision of services. Each of these options presents different sets of implementation opportunities and challenges to be explored in greater detail in part IV.
Attendance
Marriage programs generally do not serve the volume of clients that program developers might hope or would be useful for scientific evaluation. Three aspects of attendance are useful in thinking about how to increase the number of clients who attend marriage programs: scale, barriers to participation, and recruiting.
Scale: Marriage programs tend to be small in scale and do not serve large numbers of clients each year. Programs may have limited space or resources to serve large numbers of classes or offer them more frequently. Even if they could offer more services, programs frequently have difficulty getting enough clients to attend their programs.
Barriers to client participation: The most common barrier to client participation providers report is couples’ difficulty finding time to attend these programs given the other demands of daily life. Child care and transportation are other frequently mentioned barriers, especially for low-income populations. Programs vary in how they have dealt with these problems. Some programs shortened the length of their interventions to appeal to clients with limited time. One program offered on-site child care to make it easier for couples with children to attend. A marriage program in a prison arranged for lodging for the wives of inmates who had to travel to attend the seminars.
Recruiting: Providers describe a variety of recruiting strategies to attract clients. They utilize fliers, newsletters, church bulletins, resource web sites, and newspaper advertisements. The extent of their marketing efforts, however, is often constrained by budget limitations.
Target Stage
Programs currently serve couples and individuals in various stages of relationships. Some population groups are popular targets of programs, like premarital couples. Then there are groups that providers wish they could serve more frequently, like couples with children who have recently left the household, also known as “empty-nesters.” One provider said programs prepare couples for marriage and then say “see you in 50 years.” We describe different target groups in table 3, categorizing them as prominent targets, groups frequently served by current programs, and less prominent targets, groups that might be served more often in the future.
| Prominent Target | Less Prominent Targets |
|
Premarital: This commonly served group presents a mix of challenges and opportunities to providers. On the one hand, this group often seeks marriage services, as many are required to attend premarital programs to be married in a church. Interventions at this stage also can ward off later marital problems that could lead to disruption of the relationship. On the other hand, providers say this group is often in a “honeymoon stage” and does not have an understanding of the realities of marriage, and may, therefore, not be as receptive to the intervention. First Baby: This group has received more attention recently for the opportunities it presents for intervention. These couples are usually engaged in their relationship and eager for information about how to sustain their marriage with the birth of their baby. And for expecting couples that are not married, research suggests many of these couples express a desire to marry.(1) Moreover, the birth of a baby can be stressful for couples, and providers believe relationship skills can help couples through difficult times. Crisis: Programs frequently serve couples seeking assistance because their marriage is not working as they had hoped and they are considering divorce. Or couples may experience a life crisis that puts extraordinary stress on their relationships. Interventions in these circumstances provide couples with skills to help them work through the problems they currently face and address problems in the future. |
Youth: Programs could provide information about relationships to youth in schools. Some providers believe these programs would have a captive audience. They believe youth hunger for information on relationships and love. Programs through schools would reach large numbers of youth, a higher volume of clients than is typical of most marriage programs. Young Adults: Providers say many young adults struggle to navigate dating situations and skills training could help them make good decisions when selecting partners. Raising Children: Balancing the demands of children, careers, and a marriage can be challenging for couples. Providers think this is a group often not targeted but that would benefit from services to help them strengthen their marriage during this busy stage. Interventions at this stage, providers suggest, might prevent later disruptions in marriages when children leave home and couples have not maintained a satisfying marriage. Or for single individuals raising children, these programs might help them select partners and develop healthy relationships that will be beneficial to them and their children. “Empty Nest” / Caring for Elderly Parents: Stepfamilies: Providers say this often-neglected group presents a unique set of challenges, often not addressed by premarital programs. They believe these couples are eager for information on how to blend two families. |
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