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Family Relationships & Family Health
MDRC’s research focuses on learning how public policy can bolster low-income families’ efforts to create an environment that supports the healthy development of their children. In some cases, the same issues that pose challenges to parents’ employment can also impede children’s healthy development. MDRC is studying several initiatives that seek to benefit children by improving parents’ emotional well-being, by building healthier family relationships and marriages, or by using other means to strengthen families.
Many families face special economic and parenting challenges that well-designed social policies might help mitigate. Parents who struggle with mental illness or substance abuse suffer problems that affect not only their employment but also their children’s development. The multisite Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project is investigating promising ways to improve the long-term employment prospects of such parents. For example, under way in Rhode Island is a test of the effectiveness of a care management model that aims to engage depressed Medicaid recipients in successful treatment. This study allows for investigation into the ways in which a program aimed at reducing parents’ depression may indirectly benefit children’s development. Two earlier MDRC demonstrations addressed other barriers faced by parents. New Chance sought to increase self-sufficiency among young welfare mothers who had dropped out of school by offering such services as basic skills training and parenting classes. Recognizing that fathers, too, play an important role in the financial and emotional support of their children, the Parents’ Fair Share demonstration was designed to boost the earnings of low-income noncustodial fathers, augment their capacity to provide child support, and increase their involvement with their children.
A six-year follow-up of the Minnesota Family Investment Program extended the original study by providing long-term information on program impacts on families’ economic well-being, marriage rates, and child outcomes. The Building Strong Families project is facilitating the development of programs that offer low-income unwed parents a variety of services to foster healthy parental relationships. The Supporting Healthy Marriage project is mounting the first large-scale, multisite, multiyear, rigorous test of marriage skills programs for low-income married couples.
As part of the Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration and Evaluation Project, MDRC has worked closely with Early Head Start sites in Kansas and Missouri to enhance the employment component of their existing two-generation services to parents with young children. In a multisite experimental evaluation, MDRC will examine the effects of this approach on parents’ employment, their parenting skills, and their children’s well-being.
In 2010, MDRC was awarded the Design Options for Home Visiting Evaluation (DOHVE) project from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Home visiting programs provide preventive services to families with young children to prevent child maltreatment, improve maternal and child health outcomes, and increase school readiness. DOHVE will provided technical assistance to grantees of the new federal home visiting program and develop design options for conducting a national evaluation of this federal initiative.
Finally, MDRC and ideas42 are leading the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project, sponsored by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is the first major opportunity to apply a behavioral research lens to programs that serve poor families in the United States — programs like cash assistance, child care, child support, and child welfare. The project will apply behavioral insights to issues related to operations, implementation, structure, and efficacy of social service programs and policies. The ultimate goal is to learn how tools from behavioral science can be used to improve the well-being of low-income children, adults, and families.
Key Documents on Family Relationships & Family Health
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