Child Custody News

Child Support Community Are Reports Of Many Research Projects Funded By The Administration For Children And Families

Now available to the greater child support community are reports of many research projects funded by the Administration for Children and Families to support its healthy marriage initiatives in ACF programs.

One such report is "Implementing Programs to Strengthen Unwed Parents' Relationships: Lessons from Family Connections in Alabama" by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. The report offers lessons from observing the experience of the "Family Connections in Alabama" project, an OCSE SIP (special improvement project) grant to pilot marriage education for low-resource families, to strengthen families and support the financial security of children. The lessons may be of interest especially to ACF grantees having projects that include provision of healthy marriage education services.

The report was prepared as part of a multi-phased ACF project, called "Building Strong Families" (BSF), which is to develop and evaluate a model for healthy marriage services for interested low-income expectant or new unwed parents. The researchers identified the Alabama project as one which might provide useful lessons for those interested in designing, planning, and implementing BSF projects in the future.

The report suggests that organizations planning to implement BSF programs recognize, for example: unwed parents desire more information about healthy marriage; participants value the involvement of married couples in the program as role models who can share from personal experience; creative approaches are necessary to involve couples in the program and sustain their ongoing participation to completion; small group settings are favored by participants; and healthy marriage education programs can be helpful in identifying and providing assistance to victims of domestic violence.

Although no evidence can be gleaned from the Alabama SIP grant project that participation had increased child support payments, the evaluation clearly shows that the father's involvement was vital: Those who participated in the program provided a higher level of support from the beginning to end. In the study, each woman who gave birth during participation, the father attended the birth and established paternity. (Also three women indicated that paternity had been established after participation in the program.)

Dr. Francesca Adler-Baeder of Auburn University, who conducted the evaluation of the Alabama SIP project, is encouraged by its "impact on the quality of the co-parenting relationship, and the support of the mother for the father's involvement." She notes that the average participation length of 10 weeks may not have given sufficient time to document changes in child support payment patterns. With continued improvements in the co-parenting relationship, the father's level and frequency of child support provision could improve as well.

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