New Report Documents Community Healthy Marriage Initiatives
Study details innovative collaboration in three cities

WASHINGTON, DC – The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced today the findings of a new report that showcase innovations in child support enforcement through programs encouraging healthy marriage.

The report, entitled “Piloting a Community Approach to Healthy Marriage Initiatives in Three Sites: Chicago, Illinois, Boston, Massachusetts and Jacksonville, Florida,” is a product of ACF’s contract with RTI International to evaluate the Community Healthy Marriage Initiative project.

The studies show the three cities have used waivers granted by the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) to implement community-level strategies to encourage healthy marriages and parenting and improve child support outcomes in a variety of ways tailored to the needs and strengths of their communities.  Although each site has its specific mix of services and approaches, all are engaging to sponsor activities and promote the overall goals of the demonstration which include increasing results in key child support enforcement measures such as the number of established paternities and support orders. 

To achieve these goals, the Jacksonville Network for Strengthening Families, a community-wide coalition, has created relationship-enhancing training programs, while Relationships for Real Life in Boston has used the funding to expand its services and partners and fund relationship skill enhancement training for couples.  In Chicago, the Illinois Healthy Relationships and Marriage Initiative has collaborated with local Catholic Charities to deliver services.

“Healthy marriages help improve the well-being of children, parents and communities,” said HHS’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Daniel Schneider.  “This report shows how the Bush Administration’s collaboration with local governments and community organizations is giving families across the country a more hopeful future.”

The Community Healthy Marriage Initiative (CHMI) project involves two components.  One component documents the implementation of healthy marriage and related activities and the second evaluates the effectiveness of the strategies within selected communities.

To read the full report, please go to:  
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/strengthen/eval_com/index.html or http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/strengthen/eval_com/reports/three_sites/three_sites.pdf.

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