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PART IV: EXPANDING MARRIAGE PROGRAMS
As we have discussed in our review of the current landscape, the vast majority of existing marriage programs serve largely middle- and upper-income couples. Some take proactive measures to ensure that programs are not prohibitive for low-income couples. However, marriage program providers who actively seek or focus on low-income couples for services are exceedingly rare. At the same time, decades of formal services to those in need in various venues have created a body of providers who know intimately the lives of low-income individuals and families. Some of these providers lament the breakdown of relationships in today’s world and the particularly strong effects these have had on low-income communities. However, these service providers, leaders of the faith community, and family specialists may not see marriage as integral to, but rather indicative of, the economic, mental, and physical well-being of their clients.
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Given this dichotomy, we examine various approaches to blending the expertise, knowledge, and experience of these two bodies of providers in order to set up a framework for thinking about the expansion of current marriage programming efforts (see figure 3). Given ACF’s specific interest in the delivery of these services to low-income populations, we focus primarily on the opportunities and challenges of serving this population. Specifically, we examine approaches to integrating marriage services into already existing programs for low-income families as well as approaches to making current marriage services more accessible to low-income families. We also conclude with a discussion of what a more “expanded approach” might look like if ACF wanted to reach an even broader set of families.
LOW-INCOME FOCUS
The current separation of providers with an eye toward marriage and those with a focus on low-income communities suggests two possible approaches for the future expansion of marriage programs to a low-income population, each with their own sets of opportunities and challenges. Future efforts to offer marriage programming to low-income communities must either help marriage providers gravitate from their current clients toward a new population of interest or encourage and enable those serving low-income couples to include marriage services in their traditional work. We examine the opportunities and challenges of each of these approaches. In addition, in the sidebar gray boxes we provide brief vignettes describing programs that in some way have merged the expertise of service providers to low-income populations with those offering marriage interventions. These program examples offer a first glimpse at how efforts to blend these fields of expertise might proceed.
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Integrating Marriage Programs into Services for Low-Income Families
When integrating marriage programming into services for low-income families, several opportunities and challenges are presented to policymakers and providers (see table 4). The most striking feature and promising attribute of this approach is the fertile knowledge base that already exists for serving, recruiting, and engaging low-income populations.
Services for low-income populations tend to be highly integrated into their communities. They frequently have existed for long periods of time in the same settings, which are often located in the hearts of low-income communities. As a result of their histories, they are well known by clients and have often established a high degree of trust in the community. One program we visited had served several generations within the same families. Potential clients probably would be most receptive to programs offered in settings in which they were familiar and had a reputation in the community as being trustworthy. We cannot say from our data whether clients would be more skeptical of services offered through public social services, like the TANF office, than services offered by a private community provider. Regardless, a key dimension to assess when considering future sites for program implementation is the ease and trust with which clients interact with the program setting.
Given their histories of providing services in these communities, these providers are extremely knowledgeable about how to recruit and retain low-income families. Repeatedly, providers of services to low-income families said for marriage services to be effective, child care and transportation have to be provided. Many providers echo the sentiment that anchoring services in the faith-based community is a particularly effective strategy for reaching a low-income population, as churches tend to be an organizing force in many low-income communities. Churches are also a place of refuge in immigrant communities. Additionally, given that programs serving low-income populations tend to have extensive collaborative networks, they are able to reach potential clients through multiple service systems, like employment, food and nutrition, and child care programs.
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Given these providers’ intimate knowledge of this clientele, while they were not overly familiar with marriage program curricula, they had very clear thoughts on how these services could be adapted to engage a low-income population. For example, they suggest programs use more appropriate language and more relevant examples, develop materials with less text, and make classes more interactive and less didactic. These providers also bring a high degree of cultural competence to their services. They not only understand the unique issues facing low-income and minority populations, but they have already developed strategies for demonstrating respect for different individual needs, family situations, and cultures. For example, one program staffs its services so that a client who enters its offices is greeted in his or her primary language. While developing appropriate materials and curricula are necessary steps and will present challenges, this group possesses a unique and essential knowledge about low-income populations that will be critical to this effort.
Moreover, the low-income population is not homogenous. Some groups have very particular needs, for which providers with specific expertise are required. For example, one provider serving a refugee population noted these families have experienced trauma beyond the norm. Many witness trauma in their country of origin and then relocate and separate from their families and communities. Thus, providers with an understanding of post-traumatic stress and separation anxiety are vital to providing services to this population. Similarly, while domestic violence, substance abuse, and mental health problems plague all socioeconomic groups, providers working with low-income populations appear particularly attuned to these issues and convey an ability to quickly screen and identify these problems. Experiencing any one of these problems, much less a combination, may present a significant barrier to the effectiveness of a marriage skills intervention. Thus, providers able to identify these problems are essential to the success of marriage programming efforts.
Organizational features of these programs also present opportunities for this approach. These programs tend to operate in either embedded or satellite settings (see part II) that allow them to reach large segments of the population. They also tend to be programs that rely on multiple sources of funding, rather than simply client fees. They are, therefore, able to keep costs low for clients, and at the same time have developed a capacity for fundraising. They may have fundraising arms of their organization or at least be knowledgeable of grant writing strategies.
In terms of challenges, the most salient issue with this approach is resolving the tension between marriage programming and organizational culture. Many of these programs have significant reservations about marriage initiatives. Marriage programming may not fit with a mission to support all families of any family form. It may be stigmatizing to clients who cannot marry or choose not to do so. Organizations believing that meeting families’ basic needs or developing human capital take priority over relationship training may not support allocating limited resources for marriage programming. Moreover, some programs might explore marriage programming as an additional source of funding, yet in these cases, the organization’s commitment to the intervention might not be lasting and could impact its overall effectiveness. Program developers seeking to integrate programs in these settings will need to find ways to address these reservations as they are prevalent among programs serving low-income populations.
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Finally, while many of these programs bring a high degree of cultural competence to the table, some providers may not have the therapeutic backgrounds or organizations have the capacity to actually address more serious issues like domestic violence, substance abuse, and mental health problems. For example, if organizations rely heavily on paraprofessionals because they are less costly but also more culturally competent and domestic violence is revealed, the provider may not have the training to handle this situation. More importantly, will a referral to another service be sufficient to address this issue? Families might not follow up with the referral, or the agency to which the client was referred may not be able to serve the client. Ideally, marriage programs would be facilitated by providers who have the background to address more serious concerns and would operate in settings with the capacity to handle these problems internally. Moreover, addressing these issues upfront may also increase the likelihood that the client would later be receptive to a marriage intervention.
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Making Existing Marriage Programs Available to Low-Income Families
Another approach, also with opportunities and challenges, is to make existing marriage programs more available to low-income families (see table 5). This approach would benefit from the many strong ties that already exist between these programs and national marriage initiatives. The providers are enthusiastic about this approach, think it is the reason for many problems couples face, and have creative ideas for implementing programs. The programs these providers operate center around marriage programming, or in some cases a more general mission of supporting families, and funding to do marriage programming is an ideal organizational fit.
These providers also have tremendous experience providing these services and knowledge of the curricula available; many have developed their own curricula. This basic knowledge of how the intervention works will be essential for figuring out how effective the intervention would be if adapted for other populations. They also know which adaptations might not work. For example, they will have important insights about “what is too short?” in terms of program length and dosage.
Often these providers have mental health backgrounds that would allow them to address more serious problems should they come up during the intervention. At the same time, very few of these programs report screening for these problems in the populations they serve. Dealing with clients who may experience these problems more frequently would require a careful screening process.
The biggest challenge this approach faces is that these programs tend not to be as integrated into communities, much less integrated into low-income communities. Many are free-standing operations with informal collaborative networks. The most feasible option is for these providers to offer their services in settings that are already integrated in low-income communities. This would require building cultural competency among providers to ensure they understand the specific issues low-income and minority populations face, especially those of the particular low-income population they would be serving. If clients were to come to their current offices, transportation barriers may need to be addressed. Services may also need to expand beyond just marriage services. Specifically, providers of services to low-income populations felt strongly that to be effective for this population marriage interventions should be complimented by services that address human capital development and help clients meet their basic needs.
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Organizationally, there are also challenges to this approach. To provide services in other settings or integrate services for low-income populations in their own settings, current marriage programs need to develop more formal collaborative links with other service agencies. This strategy also requires adaptations in how programs are funded. Programs could no longer rely on client fees, as this would be prohibitive to low-income clients, so they would have to develop a capacity to apply for and receive contracts and grants.
EXPANDED FOCUS
Future efforts to implement marriage programming might also focus on expanding marriage interventions into a broader range of settings and service systems that serve middle- and upper-income populations. Specifically, this approach involves merging current expertise on marriage interventions with systems currently engaged in serving a higher-income or more general population. Such systems might include employee assistance programs, colleges, YMCA’s, prenatal programs, and extension services. This approach presents numerous opportunities and challenges, too (see table 6).
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This approach benefits from the support of a growing research base suggesting that marriage interventions may have positive effects for middle- and higher-income couples. This may serve as a selling point for organizations that are not familiar with marriage interventions or have reservations about providing these services. Another particular benefit is that many of the curricula for marriage interventions have been already tested on these populations, which would make expansion of these programs more feasible.
Integrating marriage programs into already existing service settings also benefits from the knowledge and experiences these service settings already have serving their particular client population. Like the programs serving low-income populations, these programs have strategies for recruiting and engaging their targeted client populations. For example, employee assistance programs market their services through employers to reach potential clients, YMCA’s may include information on community bulletin boards, or churches may include information in their weekly bulletins. Moreover, while middle- and upper-income populations may experience fewer stressors than the low-income population, many of these clients will not approach agencies in need of help necessarily. Therefore, relying on agencies that already have strategies in place for presenting new information to clients is important for this approach to be effective.
Similarly, this approach could also take advantage of the existing organizational structures of these programs. For example many are embedded programs or have satellite structures with far reaching networks of services already in place. For example, extension offices serve clients throughout the country. YMCA’s have a headquarters and centers in most communities.
Like programs serving low-income populations, these programs too may need to develop the capacity to address more serious issues like domestic violence, substance abuse, and mental health problems. Any programs dealing with relationship issues will likely encounter these types of problems because of their impact on relationships. As couples talk about their relationships, if these problems exist, they may be revealed. Providers may not have the training, and the organization may not have the capacity to appropriately handle these issues. Establishing a referral network may be one strategy, yet ensuring these clients are appropriately identified, referred, and most importantly, actually receive needed services are important challenges to consider.
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