Robyn Parker
Research Officer, Australian Institute of Family Studies.
INTRODUCTION
Once upon a time (ie around the 60’s and 70’s) providing services to families already in difficulty was justified because the number of such families was considered ‘small’. However when the demand for such services began to climb, primary interventions aimed at reducing the incidence of social problems became more popular. As Paula Goodyer recently wrote, "putting money and resources into fixing the problems of troubled youth is a bit like parking an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff in case anyone falls off — it makes more sense to build a strong fence at the top" (9 July 2000). The same principle applies to potential relationships.
Thankfully there has been for many years a group of people trying to build that fence for couples — or at least help couples build and repair their own fence. The engine driving marriage and relationship education in Australia comprises a large group of committed people, some paid, many unpaid. All share a belief that what they do can help couples build and sustain strong marriages and, by extension, families.
I make no claims to being an expert in the field. My views have been shaped by both reading about the field and talking to educators over the past 7 years or so hovering at the edge, and so some of what I say today may not be totally accurate. But I think this points to one of the difficulties in this field — which I’ll come back to later.
Today I want to briefly review the development of the field in Australia, to give a sense of how far it has travelled and where it is, look at a few of the developments that have a strong impact in the past couple of years, and try to pull the threads together in a way that suggests what could (or should??) happen next…
POTTED HISTORY
Somewhere around the late 1940’s, when the divorce rate began to creep up [wartime relationships breaking up], pre-Cana "conferences" were offered wherein priests, doctors, bankers, married couples, and occasionally a specialist such as an interior decorator would provide lectures on various topics. The 50 or 60 couples attending would be segregated for the male and female anatomy and sexuality lectures. Don Burnard (1978) notes that these conferences have been described as the "authoritarian and enthusiastic promotion of Christian values as the solution to escalating marital breakdown".
During the 50’s professional counselling or tutoring was increasingly provided by governments to premarriage and married couples, and the marriage encounter movement began to grow. Services expanded through the 60’s although programs were still primarily offered through churches. The content of these courses is difficult to identify, and it is tempting to assume that they would have promoted very traditional roles and behaviours…
In the 70’s things began to get more interesting, with attempts to coordinate and organise the providers. The first organised body was set up in 1973 by and for providers affiliated with the Catholic Church, followed in 1979 by a similar national body for non-Catholic affiliated providers. These two bodies, CSME (still existing) and AAME (long gone), were the joint focus and source of activity in the field during the 80’s and into the 90’s, in funding, provision and development, and training. At present CSME, MEAA (Marriage Educators’ Association of Australia, AAME’s replacement) are the two primary organisations involved in the provision and evolution of marriage and relationship education services.
Funding from the Attorney General began in the mid-late 1970’s, and allowed professional training to become more widely available to educators. Gradually throughout the 70’s adult education principles were adopted, to some degree or another, tentatively by some, wholeheartedly by others, and the focus of programs shifted to encouraging couples to reflect on themselves and their relationship. The training received by educators has, however, tended to remain variable: some are trained within a program via observation, supervision, and mentoring, while others go through a stand-alone training program designed according to the principles and orientation of the service provider, and there are some who do not receive any such formal training. The 80’s also saw the introduction of training of communication and conflict resolution skills into programs.
For those of you who don’t know a lot about the field, it’s important to note here that service providers take many shapes and forms: ministers may conduct their own informal sessions with couples, and/or they may administer an inventory and provide the feedback; they may conduct discussions with small groups of couples. Agencies, whether church-based, church-affiliated, or secular run programs for groups of couples, using trained educators and combining information, activities such as individual and couple exercises and role plays, and exploration and development of communication and conflict resolution skills. A very creative field, it is not unusual for Lego blocks, coloured crayons and textas, and Monopoly money to be used to facilitate active learning.
A provider may also work with couples as a PREPARE or FOCCUS administrator, two widely used inventories that are used to identify couple strengths and weaknesses (not a term they would use). Civil celebrants tend to have little or nothing to do with education programs — some will hand out information leaflets but generally they do not see educative or preparation activities as part of their role. Indeed, as was pointed out at the field’s National Conference just a couple of weeks ago, civil celebrants are often approached to perform a ceremony a very short time before the wedding is required…so they have very little time to engage in any meaningful preparation or education per se.
A fairly placid sort of field, marriage and relationship education has been buffeted somewhat in the past few years — variously misunderstood, dismissed, and underestimated. At times the field has been forced to examine itself closely. To their credit, members of the field have demonstrated a willingness and ability to engage in lively discourse and debate about the range of issues facing them.
RECENT EVENTS
Government Initiatives: FAMNET; "To Have and To Hold".
As noted earlier, funding trickled into the field from about the mid-70’s. In the mid-90’s changes to the ways in which family and relationship services were administered led to increased focus on, among other things, quality of services and performance assessment…the bottom line being that funding came to be linked to performance. As part of the development of a system to improve service quality and information (FAMQUIS) FAMNET was introduced, its aim being to enhance communication with and between funded services and to collect data. The goal is to ensure better outcomes for service clients. Thus demographic information and measures of whether intended client benefits have been achieved were to be routinely collected by funded providers of marriage and relationship education programs.
Needless to say there were teething problems when the system was introduced, not least because of the sheer volume of data required, and the process is still not all it was expected to be. Concerns also related to terminology that didn’t lend itself readily to the field, and the way in which "achievement" is measured is somewhat impractical. As I understand it, recently there have been positive steps towards reconciling these difficulties — a compliment to the commitment and abilities of both the educators and Family Relationships Branch members involved.
"To Have and to Hold"
An inquiry into aspects of family services, this comprehensive analysis of marriage and relationship education, and other family services such as family skills training, pre-empted the launch of the government’s National Families Strategy. It examined the range of approaches to marriage and relationship education, the role of research in evaluating programs, the bases for funding of programs, promotion, and other international and local developments at various levels (such as legislative changes in the USA and programs developed for specific target groups in Australia). I can't cover all of the areas the committee explored in this paper, but I want to comment on one issue the Committee raised which I think pervades the general public, some levels of government and academe, and which I think requires considerable attention.
Among other things, one of the difficulties the committee identified that hampers progress in the evolution of the field is the consistent confusion of marriage and relationship EDUCATION with marriage COUNSELLING by parties who are not directly involved in the education field. This is a common and frustrating experience for anyone who has tried to explain what marriage and relationship education is to someone new to the term, and an issue which, unless dealt with, will continue to obstruct progress in the field both in terms of attracting couples to programs and in terms of raising the profile and credibility of the field in both government and academic circles.
The field of marriage and relationship education is a very complex one, but I think this report could form a sort of template for how to proceed in developing the field. The broad domains the report addresses (funding, research, promotion, etc) could usefully serve as a framework for an integrated program of analysis and action. The recently formed Marriage and Family Council already have a research subcommittee; other such committees could be formed to address the various areas of concern.
Australian Institute of Family Studies Roundtable on Research into Premarriagership Education in Australia
Co-hosted by Moira Eastman of the Australian Catholic University, we gathered a group of relationship professionals — academics, practitioners and researchers — to discuss why the research so far has failed to convince us of the effectiveness of premarriage education, and to talk about ways in which this problem could be overcome. The major outcome of the discussions was a Briefing Paper (Australian Institute of Family Studies Briefing No. 8), setting out a framework for conducting research into marriage and relationship education in a way that works within the constraints of the field. In that paper I suggested using correlational studies to evaluate effectiveness rather than randomised controlled comparisons. It’s not that I think randomised trials belong in the too-hard basket, but to my mind it is impractical to attempt experimental research in this field — there are simply too many variables to control for, and the issues of self-selection and appropriate control groups are always present. Couples allocated to a treatment group will still have to consent to participating in an education program, and those couples that do agree may already have high levels of motivation and/or other relationship skills that enhance the quality and longevity of their relationship.
I think it would be more productive to ascertain each partner’s willingness to participate on intake, and analyse the effect of reluctance on longer-term outcomes. Educators will tell you that even the reluctant participants will admit to getting something of value out of a program, and there is some empirical evidence from the USA that reluctance does not impact on the outcome of the program. I also suggested that qualitative research would be a rich source of data on how the programs actually work — as Michele Simons, long-time marriage and relationship educator and lecturer in adult education reiterates, controlled comparisons will tell us about effectiveness but not how the learning is taken on board in the couples’ day-to-day activities. One of the problems identified by John Simons in the excellent series of papers from the Lord Chancellors Dept in the UK, was that when evaluating the skill levels of partners, especially some years down the track, it is possible that the skills are being reproduced for the researchers and may not be used in the couples’ daily lives at all.
Australian Couples in Millenium Three: Professor Kim Halford, Griffith University
In 1999, the Department of Family and Community Services commissioned a review of the marriage and relationship education literature and report on ways to enhance the effectiveness of programs. Conducted by Professor Kim Halford of Griffith University, this report has stimulated a great deal of discussion and consternation in the field. Halford raises a number of concerns about access to programs, their content and format. Some of these are quite valid and bear serious consideration while others reflect a lack of fit between Halford’s portrayal of Australian programs and how educators describe them. Naturally this had led to serious concerns about policy decisions being made on the basis of Professor Halford’s report.
One of Halford’s main contentions is the absence of relationship skills training in Australian marriage and relationship education programs. In his review of the literature, skills-based programs are correctly identified as having empirical evidence of their effectiveness in the short- and medium-term. As such he recommends the adoption of skills training programs, in particular the US program PREP© , in Australia.
The three basic components of the skills training involved in PREP © are:
When Australian programs are closely examined the various components of this three-step process can be identified; they are presented differently and often given different labels, but essentially the same skills are being presented. A key difference lies in the amount of time devoted to "coaching" couples during the actual program. Since both PREP and Australian programs vary in length the time available for coaching is sometimes limited, and in the PREP courses run over a single day session no skills coaching occurs at all. As Kevin Andrews points out, skills training can not save all relationships — so there is a need for balance here.
Halford stresses the need for multimedia approaches to designing and conducting programs. Access to programs for couples in remote and rural communities can be facilitated by web-based programs that include varying degrees of contact with trained educators. I have concerns about completely self-directed programs since I wonder at the reliability and validity of self-evaluation (but then I am a bit if a cynic), however Halford’s point that groups are not suitable for all couples is entirely valid, and developing alternative modes of service provision is clearly necessary to improve access.
A further access issue relates to high-risk (of relationship breakdown) and low-referral (not commonly attracted to or programs) couples. Indigenous couples and those from non-English speaking backgrounds are of particular interest and Halford recommends developing targeted programs. There are a number of programs currently offered to both of these groups, and while educators work to include such couples in their programs they are also aware that targeting may have the unintended consequence of labelling couples. Beth Seddon, National Director of Relationships Australia, notes that the issue is whether a targeted or universal system of developing programs is preferred, or whether both should be employed.
Halford also suggests the expansion of programs to transitions other than marriage, for example around the time of the birth of the first child or retirement. Such programs already exist but tend not to focus specifically on relationship issues. Parenting programs are available but only recently have relationship issues been incorporated into their curricula (Sanders, 2000), finding clear benefits to the couple in reduced conflict and increased relationship satisfaction (at least for husbands). Retirement programs are often focussed on financial planning. It seems reasonable to expect that cross-fertilisation of these various types of programs would produce increased positive outcomes for couples and their families.
A final point Halford makes that I will mention today is that programs are not sufficiently informed by research. I think the issue here is which research and what form it takes. Program content and provision does make use of the vast literature on marriage and relationships, but in my opinion the constructs tend to be over-simplified — perhaps due to the need to present the information in ways that stimulate and involve program participants. There is also a tendency for the work of a small number of researchers to be predominate, and for some of the less scientific "pop" psychology to be adopted — again because they are easily adapted for use in programs. One of the factors contributing to this situation may be the lack of access to sources of information for a large section of the field and the lack of resources available to service providers required to keep track of research developments.
WHERE TO FROM HERE?
To address the above and other issues I think several things need to occur: