Contact: Carl Nathe

UK’s Department of Family Studies, will work in concert with BHMP, a community-based nonprofit organization, to manage the project in Fayette and its contiguous counties over three years. The matching funds required by the ACF will come primarily through private contributions and community service time donated by UK faculty.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 31, 2005) -- The University of Kentucky, together with the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services and Bluegrass Healthy Marriages Partnership (BHMP), was recently awarded a federal grant for $1 million to initiate a research-based community healthy marriages initiative that could be replicated in other areas of Kentucky and nationwide.

“This research is what we’re about in our department,” said Gladys Hildreth, professor and chair of UK’s Department of Family Studies, part of the School of Human Environmental Sciences within the College of Agriculture. “We are committed to outreach and being engaged in the dynamics which lead to successful outcomes for our families and in turn, our future generations.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is funding the grant. “This project will help Kentucky improve the well-being of children, promote paternity establishment, and help parents provide increased financial and emotional support for their children, said Dr. Wade F. Horn, ACF’s assistant secretary.

Dr. Eugene Foster, the cabinet’s undersecretary for Children and Family Services, lauded the grant initiative.

“By promoting the financial health and overall well-being of children, this grant will improve child support enforcement and decrease the number of open child support cases,” he said. “More importantly, it should help enhance fathers’ and mothers’ commitment to each other and to their children,” said Foster.

UK’s Department of Family Studies, will work in concert with BHMP, a community-based nonprofit organization, to manage the project in Fayette and its contiguous counties over three years. The matching funds required by the ACF will come primarily through private contributions and community service time donated by UK faculty.

While activities may appeal to broader audiences, the project is primarily aimed at unmarried or married couples who have or are expecting to have children.

Family science research has confirmed that children do best when their parents remain together in a non-high-conflict marriage. As a result of this prevention approach, the ACF has stated that it is reasonable to expect child support enforcement issues will lessen.

The initiative will also promote co-parenting and child support commitment by couples who choose not to marry or stay married.

As part of the grant’s terms, activities that are funded by the grant must be neutral with respect to religion, though actual programming will ordinarily be funded directly by partnering organizations themselves.

Grant projects are required to screen participants for domestic violence and refer appropriate individuals for services.