Strengthening Unmarried Parents' Relationships: The Early Impacts of Building Strong Families

This report provides impacts of BSF on couples about 15 months after they applied for the program. Early impacts show that, when results are averaged across the eight individual programs included in the evaluation, BSF did not achieve its primary objective of improving the stability and quality of the couples’ relationships. Results varied across the eight programs with positive effects for the Oklahoma City BSF program and negative effects for the Baltimore program. Other programs had little or no effects on relationships. BSF had overall positive effects for African American couples—improving the quality of their relationships.