As part of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families’ initiative to support healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood, 13 grantees in 12 states received five-year grants from the Office of Family Assistance to implement multiple activities to help support and sustain marriages and families of fathers during and after their incarceration. To evaluate the overall effectiveness of these grantees, RTI International was contracted to conduct a seven-year implementation evaluation and multi-site, longitudinal impact evaluations of selected grantees. This evaluation is referred to as the MFS-IP evaluation.

According to the Administration for Children and Families, the objectives of its MFS-IP evaluation were:

• To describe the 13 programs on a number of dimensions including program history and context, type of grantee organization, target population, intervention strategies and program design;
• To describe program implementation, challenges, successes and lessons learned;
• To determine the impact of these diverse programs on outcomes such as marital stability, positive family interactions, family financial well-being and recidivism; and
• To identify the mediation mechanisms (or primary pathways) through which these programs achieve success.

Nine research briefs and evaluations are included at the link below.