Healthy Marriage and Relationship Education For Adults
Helping Every Area of Relationships Thrive (HEART)
ACF’s investment in healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood (HMRF) projects aims to create and sustain stronger families. In recent years, ACF-funded healthy marriage and relationship education recipients have supported family strengthening through providing marriage and relationship education, parenting skills, and job and career advancement activities.
ACF’s Helping Every Area of Relationships Thrive (HEART) program provides funding for demonstration projects that support activities to promote healthy marriages and/or relationships to ultimately strengthen families. HEART projects must be designed for adult individuals or couples (age 18 and older). Projects provide a broad array of healthy marriage and relationship promotion activities and services designed to integrate skills-based healthy marriage education, along with additional services to address relationship skills and job and career advancement opportunities.
Projects are expected to include at least 12 hours of curriculum-based workshops delivered in more than two sessions over at least two weeks. Curricula must be evidence-informed and skills-based.
Projects will provide curriculum-based skills development and services designed to support seven family-strengthening activities outlined in the legislative authority:
- Public Advertising Campaigns - Public advertising campaigns on the value of marriage and the skills needed to increase marital stability and health.
- Marriage and Relationship Education/Skills (MRES) - Marriage education, marriage skills, and relationship skills programs that may include parenting skills, financial management, conflict resolution, and job and career advancement.
- Pre-Marital Education - Pre-marital education and marriage skills training for engaged couples and for couples or individuals interested in marriage.
- Marriage Enhancement - Marriage enhancement and marriage skills training programs for married couples.
- Divorce Reduction - Divorce reduction programs that teach relationship skills.
- Marriage Mentoring - Marriage mentoring programs that use married couples as role models and mentors in at-risk communities.
- Reduction of Disincentives to Marriage - Programs to reduce the disincentives to marriage in means-tested aid programs, if offered in conjunction with any activity described in this subparagraph.
Learn more by reading the FY2025Funding Opportunity Announcement: