AVANCE-Houston FRAMEWorks Program Evaluation

AVANCE-Houston seeks to understand whether a standard or compressed schedule format for delivering the Survival Skills for Healthy Families curriculum better meets the needs of low-income adults to improve skill retention and, ultimately, to promote better outcomes for healthy family relationships and economic stability.

AVANCE-Houston's FRAMEWorks (Family, Relationship, and Marriage Education Works) Project seeks to promote healthy family relationships and economic stability by providing the Survival Skills for Healthy Families (SSHF) curriculum to cohorts of low-income adults. Developed by Family Wellness Associates, SSHF is an evidence-based curriculum delivered through a series of workshops that focus on communication skills, conflict resolution, knowledge of the benefits of marriage, stress and anger management, parenting skills, financial literacy, job and career advancement, and relationship skills to improve family and economic stability. In the past, AVANCE has offered two curriculum delivery models: recurring weekly workshops (standard schedule format) and intensive weekend retreats (compressed schedule format). Each model meets the needs of the target population in different ways, and participants consider factors such as childcare, work/school schedules, weekend availability, and geographic location when choosing their preferred model. The key goal of this descriptive evaluation is to assess the extent that attitudes and behaviors related to parenting, partner relationships, and financial and job readiness change after participation in the SSHF curriculum. Though the program offers support services and economic stability resources, our analysis will only include outcome changes based on surveys taken at program enrollment, program completion, and one-year post-enrollment. Additionally, a secondary analysis will focus on the ancillary question of whether differences in outcomes exist between in-person and virtual format group participants, and subgroup analyses will be conducted.