Integrating Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education into an Employment Training Program: The Impacts of Career STREAMS
Evidence | Publications

Integrating Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education into an Employment Training Program: The Impacts of Career STREAMS

OPRE Report #2022-162
Published: Aug 31, 2022
Publisher: Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Human Services Family Support Strengthening Families and Responsible Fatherhood Federal Research and Evaluation
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Associated Project

Strengthening Relationship Education and Marriage Services (STREAMS) Evaluation

Time frame: 2015-2022

Prepared for:

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation

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Key Findings
  • The program succeeded in enrolling participants for whom both employment services and relationship education had relevance. Everyone entered the program expecting to receive employment services and nearly all participants reported having had at least one romantic relationship in the year before study enrollment.
  • Compared with the traditional employment training program, Career STREAMS did not change participants’ relationship skills, attitudes, or experiences after one year.
  • Compared with the traditional employment training program, Career STREAMS did not change participants’ connection to the labor market, earnings, and economic well-being after one year.

This report is the second in a series on the implementation and impacts of a novel program that sought to integrate HMRE into an employment training program for young adults. To develop and implement the program, Family and Workforce Centers of America (FWCA), a long-standing provider of employment training in St. Louis, Missouri, enhanced one of its traditional employment training programs to include lessons from a widely implemented relationship education curriculum, along with additional content on workplace relationship skills and personal finances. The integrated program—called Career STREAMS—offered (1) daily workshops for two weeks covering employment-related topics and information on HMRE; (2) five, one-hour booster sessions offered weekly following the two-week workshop; and (3) individualized case management and job development services.

This report documents the study methods, describes program costs and implementation, and presents program impacts after one year. The impacts were estimated by comparing the outcomes of participants who were randomly assigned to either a group that was offered Career STREAMS or a control group that was offered FWCA’s traditional employment training program.

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