Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Performance Measures and Additional Data Collection

For decades, various organizations and agencies (including community- and faith-based organizations, local governments, and universities) have been developing and operating programs to strengthen families through healthy marriage and relationship education and responsible fatherhood programming. The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA), has had administrative responsibility for federal funding of such programs since 2006 through the Healthy Marriage (HM) and Responsible Fatherhood (RF) Grant Programs. The authorizing legislation for the programs may be found in Section 403(a)(2) of the Social Security Act. Grant recipients receiving funding for HM programs offer services designed to promote healthy marriage and relationships. Legislatively authorized activities for adults include public advertising campaigns, marriage and relationship education/skills, pre-marital education, marriage enhancement, divorce reduction, marriage mentoring, and reduction of disincentives to marriage. Legislatively authorized activities for youth include education in high schools, marriage and relationship education/skills, and public advertising campaigns. RF grant recipients must provide legislatively authorized activities in three areas: economic stability, responsible parenting, and healthy marriage. ACF requires HMRF grant recipients to collect and report performance measures about program operations, services, and clients served. ACF provides a performance measures data collection system called nFORM (Information, Family Outcomes, Reporting, and Management) to grant recipients to improve the efficiency of data collection and reporting and the quality of data. This system allows for streamlined and standardized submission of grant recipient performance data through regular progress reports, and it also supports grant recipient-led and federal research projects. Grant recipients are required by ACF’s Office of Grants Management (OGM) to submit a Performance Progress Report (PPR) twice during each grant year (in October and April), reporting on the programmatic activities conducted by the grant recipient in the prior six months and activities planned for the next six months. The semi-annual PPR (Instrument 5) and the quarterly performance report templates (QPR, Instrument 6) fulfill these requirements for the HMRF grant recipients. The performance measures data collection and reporting instruments for the 2020 cohort were approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB #0970-0566) in 2021. The instruments have been used as planned. Through September 29, 2023 (the end of grant year 3), grant recipients in the 2020 cohort had enrolled 103,444 clients, administered the OMB-approved survey instruments, and submitted the OMB-approved reports to ACF to meet reporting requirements. In addition, the data have been used to support numerous federal and grant recipient-led evaluations of the HMRF programs. The following ICR has been updated with non substantive changes in response to the Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government Executive Order (Defending Women EO) and recent Presidential Actions related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), such as those covered under the EO Initial Recissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions.

The latest form for Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Performance Measures and Additional Data Collection expires 2027-03-31 and can be found here.

1: Applicant Characteristics - Program Applicants

Federal Enterprise Architecture: Community and Social Services - Social Services