Restoring Empowerment and Choosing Hope (REACH) in Sarasota Florida
Jewish Family & Children's Service of the Suncoast, Inc.
Summary
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.
Description
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. Unde…
Eligibility
- Age range
- 18+ years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Yes
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
Interventions
- BehavioralMarriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) Intervention
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).
Location
- Jewish Family and Children ServiceSarasota, Florida