Promoting Healthy Marriages in Adoptive Families

Overview

The main goal of this project is to find out what interventions strengthen marriages in families with challenging adopted children. The Center is the evaluator of a demonstration project focused on marriage and adoption education with adoptive families to reduce adoption instability and improve family functioning. This five-year project is based at the Children’s Home and Aid Society of Rockford.

The overall goal of the five year project is to conduct an evaluation of the marriage education program to be offered to pre adoptive and adoptive couples, conduct an evaluation of the adoption education program and to evaluate the level of coping in families served by this program. Families who participate in the adoption education and therapeutic family retreat program are the focus of the study. The evaluation is conducted through the administration and analysis of the ENRICH marital satisfaction scale at pre-test and post-test periods, and by an ongoing evaluation of changes in the adoptive families functioning through analysis of the Family Crisis Oriented Personal Evaluation Scale ( F-COPES) pre-forms and post- forms completed by project participants, who participate in the adoption education and therapeutic family retreat program.

Funding Source

The project is funded by U.S. Children’s Bureau via the Children’s Home and Aid Society of Illinois at the Rockford site.

Research Questions and measures

Central research questions address hypothesized outcomes of the marriage education training, including:

Is there an increase in marital satisfaction and positive conflict resolution?

Do participants demonstrate increased skills in effective communication?

Do parents experience an improvement in coping?

Four ENRICH Couple Scales originally developed by Olson, Fournier, and Druckman as components of a larger marital inventory were utilized as pre-post measures of aspects of the marriage relationship. This 35-item survey assesses four aspects of marriage. The Family Crisis Oriented Personal Scales (F-COPES) was utilized to assess family coping. This self-report measure is designed to identify effective problem-solving and behavioral strategies utilized by families to cope with difficult or problematic situations.

Parents attending the training also complete evaluations on the program and are asked whether they would be willing to be interviewed by phone. A qualitative evaluation exploring their perceptions of the value of the training and suggestions for making it more useful is based on phone interviews with any participants who agree to this.

Selected Findings to date

In the most recent analysis of quantitative data, an insufficient number of couples had completed training to do a meaningful pre-post comparison. This will be done in years 3-5 of the evaluation. Conclusions that can be reached based on this evaluation to date include the following:

Most participants attended the training due to their need for help and support.
Skills in communication, problem solving and conflict resolution were viewed by participants as primary outcomes of the training. Eighty-six percent of the respondents believed that the training had been very helpful in these skill areas.
Eighty-six percent of participants reported that the training had improved their overall marital satisfaction.
Gaining social support from other adoptive parents was viewed by almost all participants as a primary benefit of the experience.
On the ENRICH couple scales, there was a 2 point increase in total marital satisfaction and a 2.1 increase in conflict resolution. More data needs to be collected to be able to test the significance of these differences.
Scores on the F-COPES indicate a 4.8 increase on the total coping scale. Wives participating in the training scored very low on the acquiring social support subscale – below the 20th percentile on the pre-test.
Qualitative interviews with participants indicated that the skills taught in the training were perceived as beneficial and were recalled and utilized. These interviews also underscore the critical benefit of social support for these parents and their ongoing needs in this area.

Project Status

This project is in the middle of its second year and will continue through September, 2011.

[Updated April 22, 2008]