Restoring Empowerment and Choosing Hope (REACH)

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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The goals of REACH are to help adults develop the skills they need to develop healthy relationship and marriage skills, improve ability to parent and co-parent effectively, identify and enhance skills and abilities required to gain or retain economic self-sufficiency, and foster family stability and increase successful marriage rates. Data from the tri-county region comprised of Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties demonstrates the presence of a number of risk factors affecting family stability, including high rates of single-parent households, births to unwed mothers, and high median rent costs compared to poverty rates and income. By providing families with relationship enhancement, parenting, and economic self-sufficiency services, this should help to optimize each family member's quality of life and improve child well-being.

Detailed Description
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REACH will serve a minimum of 337 individual adults during each full year of the five-year grant term in Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties on the Gulf Coast of Florida. REACH will target individual participants and, in cases where both members of a couple are interested in participating, will deliver services to each partner individually. The primary target population for REACH is low-income, at-risk individuals. Coupled with its successful history of providing healthy marriage programming, JFCS is well-positioned to help families in crisis become more stable and self-sufficient. Understanding the inextricable link between financial security and family stability, REACH is targeting and reaching the most vulnerable individuals based solely on economic risk factors. REACH will incorporate a comprehensive employment program combining both job and career advancement. This will help families in crisis reach improved financial stability, which will in turn improve the ability of individual participants to be better parents and better partners, furthering the goal of promoting healthy marriages and reducing local divorce rates.

Official Title
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Restoring Empowerment and Choosing Hope (REACH) in Sarasota Florida

Conditions
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Intervention, Wait List Control

Intervention / Treatment
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* Behavioral: Marriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) Intervention


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: adults age 18 or older interested in education about strengthening their current marriage or committed relationship reside in Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties on the Gulf Coast of Florida Exclusion Criteria: under age 18 do not reside in Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties

Ages Eligible for Study
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Minimum Age: 18 Years

Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

Primary Purpose: Treatment
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Interventional Model Description: The Intervention group will start with assigning a Case Manager and begin Marriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) class weekly and meet with their Case Manager as needed.
Masking: Single


Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Experimental: Marriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) Intervention<br>The Intervention group will be assigned a Case Manager and begin Marriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) class weekly and meet with their Case Manager as needed. | Behavioral: Marriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) Intervention<br>* The Intervention group will be assigned a Case Manager and placed in the next available Marriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) class that is convenient for their schedule. Intervention participants will attend classes weekly and meet with their Case Manager weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, as needed. Study measures will be gathered from intervention participants at baseline, 10 weeks after baseline, and then 22 weeks after baseline. The following tools will be utilized at baseline and follow-up assessment: (1) REACH program eligibility screening (only conducted at baseline), (2) Information, Family Outcomes, Reporting, and Management (nFORM) system, (3) Family Environment Scale (FES), (4) Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS), and (5) Economic Self-Sufficiency Scale (ESS).<br>|
| No Intervention: Wait list control<br>The Control group will be placed on a wait-list and offered services as soon as they complete the study's final 22-week follow-up measures. Control participants will not be assigned a Case Manager and will not receive any comparable services from our agency until they complete their 22-week measures. | |

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Family Environment Survey (FES) | The FES was developed to measure social and environmental characteristics of families. Face and content validity are supported by clear statements about family situations that relate to subscale domains, and the measure can differentiate between distressed and normal family samples. | 22 weeks after baseline | 

Secondary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS) | The RDAS is a 32-item self-report standardized measure with 4 subscales (Dyadic Consensus, Dyadic Satisfaction, Affectional Expression, Dyadic Cohesion) in addition to a total score. | 22 weeks after baseline | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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Healthy relationships, economic self-sufficiency