Plans to ensure the safety of children in homes affected by domestic violence must include interventions with batterers to alleviate the threat to all family members. This guide produced by the Massachusetts Department of Social Services Domestic Violence Unit describes strategies for interviewing and working with abusers. Emphasis is placed on holding offenders accountable for […]

On March 15, 2005, the Human Resources Subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives marked up the “”Personal Responsibility, Work, and Family Promotion Act of 2005″” (H.R. 240). The bill was then referred to the full committee. On March 17, the Senate Finance Committee marked up the “”Personal Responsibility and […]

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to explore how relationship quality among married and unmarried parents around the time of their baby’s birth and in the subsequent year is associated with parenting of one-year-old children. We examine two measures of relationship quality (supportiveness and frequency of conflict) and two domains […]

Family structure changed rapidly in the second half of the 20th century, with two-parent families increasingly replaced by other family forms. Divorce is common, one-third of all births occur out of wedlock, and cohabiting couples are widespread. The decline of marriage has been particularly evident in poor communities. In this societal context, three of the […]

This special issue focuses on the increasing disconnect between parenthood and marriage and how to make marriage more child centered. It begins by discussing the three levels of decline of the child centered marriage, including the weakening link between marriage and parenthood and the growing acceptance of unwed parenthood, the shift away from children within […]

Nonprofits today are being pressed to demonstrate the effectiveness of their program activities by initiating and completing outcome-oriented evaluation of projects. This guide was developed to provide practical assistance to nonprofits engaged in this process. In the pages of this guide, staff of nonprofits and community members alike are given orientation to the underlying principles […]

Family Team Conferencing and other similar family conference models involve family and community members in decision making and case planning to provide safety to children and other family members in child maltreatment cases. Since roughly half of all families experiencing child maltreatment also experience domestic violence, a large percentage of families who are possible candidates […]