Restoring Empowerment and Choosing Hope (REACH) (REACH)

Restoring Empowerment and Choosing Hope (REACH) in Sarasota Florida

The goals of REACH are to help adults develop the skills they need to develop healthy relationship and marriage skills, improve ability to parent and co-parent effectively, identify and enhance skills and abilities required to gain or retain economic self-sufficiency, and foster family stability and increase successful marriage rates. Data from the tri-county region comprised of Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties demonstrates the presence of a number of risk factors affecting family stability, including high rates of single-parent households, births to unwed mothers, and high median rent costs compared to poverty rates and income. By providing families with relationship enhancement, parenting, and economic self-sufficiency services, this should help to optimize each family member's quality of life and improve child well-being.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Intervention; Wait List Control
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Marriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) Intervention

Detailed Description

REACH will serve a minimum of 337 individual adults during each full year of the five-year grant term in Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties on the Gulf Coast of Florida. REACH will target individual participants and, in cases where both members of a couple are interested in participating, will deliver services to each partner individually. The primary target population for REACH is low-income, at-risk individuals.

Coupled with its successful history of providing healthy marriage programming, JFCS is well-positioned to help families in crisis become more stable and self-sufficient. Understanding the inextricable link between financial security and family stability, REACH is targeting and reaching the most vulnerable individuals based solely on economic risk factors. REACH will incorporate a comprehensive employment program combining both job and career advancement. This will help families in crisis reach improved financial stability, which will in turn improve the ability of individual participants to be better parents and better partners, furthering the goal of promoting healthy marriages and reducing local divorce rates.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Estimated): 900
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

• Study Contact: Name: Kathleen A Moore, PhD; Phone Number: 813-485-6977; Email: katkeeley1122@gmail.com
• Study Contact Backup: Name: Andrew Truman, BS; Phone Number: 9412564130; Email: atruman@jfcs-cares.org

Study Locations

• United States
  • Florida
    • Sarasota, Florida, United States, 34237
      • Recruiting
      • Jewish Family and Children Service
      • Contact: Megan Sicks, BA; Phone Number: 104 9413662224; Email: msicks@jfcs-cares.org

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• adults age 18 or older
• interested in education about strengthening their current marriage or committed relationship
• reside in Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties on the Gulf Coast of Florida

Exclusion Criteria:

• under age 18
• do not reside in Sarasota, Manatee, and Charlotte counties

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Marriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) Intervention; The Intervention group will be assigned a Case Manager and begin Marriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) class weekly and meet with their Case Manager as needed.	Behavioral: Marriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) Intervention; The Intervention group will be assigned a Case Manager and placed in the next available Marriage and Relationship Enhancement Skills (MRES) class that is convenient for their schedule. Intervention participants will attend classes weekly and meet with their Case Manager weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, as needed. Study measures will be gathered from intervention participants at baseline, 10 weeks after baseline, and then 22 weeks after baseline. The following tools will be utilized at baseline and follow-up assessment: (1) REACH program eligibility screening (only conducted at baseline), (2) Information, Family Outcomes, Reporting, and Management (nFORM) system, (3) Family Environment Scale (FES), (4) Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS), and (5) Economic Self-Sufficiency Scale (ESS).
No Intervention: Wait list control; The Control group will be placed on a wait-list and offered services as soon as they complete the study's final 22-week follow-up measures. Control participants will not be assigned a Case Manager and will not receive any comparable services from our agency until they complete their 22-week measures.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Family Environment Survey (FES)	The FES was developed to measure social and environmental characteristics of families. Face and content validity are supported by clear statements about family situations that relate to subscale domains, and the measure can differentiate between distressed and normal family samples.	22 weeks after baseline

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS)	The RDAS is a 32-item self-report standardized measure with 4 subscales (Dyadic Consensus, Dyadic Satisfaction, Affectional Expression, Dyadic Cohesion) in addition to a total score.	22 weeks after baseline

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Economic Self-Sufficiency Scale (ESS)	The ESS includes the following subscales with demonstrated reliability and validity: 1) Financial Management Attitudes Scale, 2) Scale of Economic Self-Sufficiency, 3) Financial Knowledge Scale, 4) Family Empowerment Scale, and 5) Financial Management and Planning Behaviors.	22 weeks after baseline

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Jewish Family & Children's Service of the Suncoast, Inc.
• Investigators: Study Director: Katelyn Kopakin, MA, Jewish Family Children's Services of the Suncoast, Inc.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): February 17, 2022
• Primary Completion (Estimated): June 1, 2025
• Study Completion (Estimated): June 1, 2025

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: March 3, 2022
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: March 17, 2022
• First Posted (Actual): March 28, 2022

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): March 25, 2025
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: February 25, 2025
• Last Verified: February 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Healthy relationships, economic self-sufficiency
• Other Study ID Numbers: 20220208

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: No