In 2003, the School of Professional Psychology at Forest Institute received a five-year, 1.2million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families for the development of a curriculum to train child welfare professionals, Head Start Family Advocates, and marriage and family therapy and social work students about the benefits of healthy marriage and family formation to child well-being. In the first three years of the grant, eleven modules were developed, namely: Fragile Families and Environmental Issues, Stepfamily Dynamics and Supporting Programs, Substance Abuse and Intimate Relationships, Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, Marriage and Family Concerns for Immigrants, Promoting Father Involvement, Premarital and Marital Education, Relationship Education for Singles, Handling the Challenge of Infidelity, Domestic Violence in Intimate Relationships, and Healthy Marriage and Your Community. These eleven modules advocate for healthy marriage and healthy relationships demonstrating how they are clearly linked to child well-being. In this workshop, an overview of the eleven modules developed with this federal grant will be presented including a sampling of three of the key modules. During the course of the grant, the need to orient community leaders to the importance of healthy marriage for child well-being also became apparent due to the support and resources they offer for the families served by child welfare professionals and therapists. Learn the critical elements in developing a curriculum to reach the community and how to then get the community on board. Implementation strategies for recruiting and retaining target populations will be presented and interactive discussion with participants will be encouraged.

Participants will:

1) Become familiar with ready to use modules developed through a federal grant for use with a wide variety of participants.

2) Identify modules most effective for various target populations and how to develop and adapt them to create and sustain interest.

3) Identify strategies to recruit and retain targeted referral sources for healthy marriage / healthy relationship education.