The importance of expanding home visitation services to include strengthening family relationships for the benefit of children

Is relationship and marriage education relevant and appropriate to child welfare?

“…Based on child welfare service's historical efforts to offer FLE-type programming (Barth et al, 2005;Lemon et al, 2005) and recent efforts to integrate RME into their services (Antle et al, 2009;Christensen et al, 2008;Sar et al, 2010), we propose that there may be more overlap of the services CWPs offer with family life education (FLE) than some suggest (Myers-Walls et al, 2011). CWPs are in a unique position to increase the stability, safety, and well-being of children by teaching principles and skills to individuals and couples that enhance knowledge of what constitutes a healthy versus unhealthy and potentially abusive relationship, strengthen current or future couple relationships, and empower individuals to safely exit unhealthy relationships.…”

“…With the expansion of RME into various sectors of family services (Antle et al, 2009;Christensen et al, 2008;Rhoades & Stanley, 2009;Sar et al, 2010), a better understanding of how CWPs' personal beliefs, social environment, and experiences influence their perception of the relevance of promoting healthy couple and marital relationships (HCMR) and the appropriateness of RME training can help advance the offering of RME training and support to CWPs. In exploring CWPs' beliefs and attitudes, we address the following research questions: (1) Do CWPs believe it is appropriate for them to attend RME training and to help their clients develop the skills they need to have healthy relationships?…”

“…Several grass-roots programs and local initiatives have trained professionals in healthy relationship and marriage education (RME) curricula to educate individuals, couples, and families in an effort to strengthen parents' relationship quality and subsequently children's well-being. Some scholars agree that psychoeducation generally, and specifically education about relationship skills, is an appropriate role for Child Welfare Professionals (CWPs; Orthner, Jones-Sanpei, & Williamson, 2004;Sar, Antle, Bledsoe, Barbee, & Van Zyl, 2010). However, to date, social service professionals and CWPs specifically, who work directly with families in crisis have largely been ignored as a potential delivery system of RME (see Antle, Frey, Sar, Barbee, & van Zyl, 2010 for an exception).…”

Training Child Welfare Professionals to Support Healthy Couple Relationships: Examining the Link to Training Transfer

“…Antle, Frey, Sar, Barbee, and van Zyl (2010) have noted that strengthening couples and families could serve as both a primary prevention strategy for foster and kinship care providers whose relationship might be taxed following a placement of a child in their home, and as a secondary prevention strategy for families already in the child welfare system by strengthening the couple relationship and thus minimizing the negative spillover effects of couple conflict on children. Research has shown that, in addition to client interest (Mooradian, Hock, Jackson, & Timm, 2011), child welfare professionals (CWPs) believe that RME is both relevant and appropriate for the work they perform (Sar, Antle, Bledsoe, Barbee & van Zyl, 2010;Schramm, Futris, Galovan, & Allen, 2013) and that training can facilitate positive shifts in attitudes that could facilitate the integration of RME into child welfare programming . As the field of child welfare expands its focus to preventive services and includes trainings on ''controversial topics'' such as RME, it is critical that evaluation models assess the effectiveness of such trainings.…”

A social work study on the impact of different factors on respect to women

“…Susinos et al (2008) performed an investigation in Cantabria, Spain, on reconstructing the history of women's education in Spain during the twentieth century, based on the school life histories of three women from the same family. Sar et al (2010) discussed the relative importance of expanding home visitation services to incorporate strengthening family relationships for the benefit of children. They explained that home visiting programs substantially address risks of maltreatment associated with the mother and infant through providing services such as medical care, education/vocational support, and training on positive infant parenting practices.…”