Topic: Parenting, Relationships
Target Population: Couples, Families
Sector: Community-Based
Military Sector: Air Force
This program is for couples who are unmarried or remarried and their children, 6 to 17 years old, who are living as stepfamilies.
Smart Steps for Stepfamilies: Embrace the Journey (Smart Steps), a community-based program for stepfamilies, is designed to teach relationship building skills to enhance couple, parent-child, and stepparent-stepchild relationships.
A single group pretest posttest evaluation of Smart Steps found a significant increase in commitment to one's spouse/partner among participants who completed the program and attended the optional booster session. Additionally, there were significant increases in agreement with spouse/partner on parenting, finances, and dealing with ex-partners. These results were found for women and men, Caucasian and Hispanic/Latino participants, and married and unmarried couples. A quasi-experimental study in a racially-diverse sample of participants who were in unstable relationships found significant increases in individual empowerment, couple quality, family harmony, and parenting efficacy for the treatment group, from pretest to posttest, compared to the control group. However, results from one longitudinal study demonstrated that small but statistically significant immediate increases in relationship quality and stability diminished over time, and these outcomes were not significant at a 1-year follow-up.
The Smart Steps program focuses on risk factors that may influence stepfamily functioning and utilizes presentations, group discussions, hands-on activities, and multi-media resources to teach skills to stepfamilies to help them strengthen their relationships. Program topics include the following:
Parents and children meet separately and then come together for joint family activities.
Since 2002, over 1,500 stepfamilies in Alabama and Utah, including stepfamilies on Hill Air Force Base, have participated in the Smart Steps program. The program has also been implemented in many other states, and over 1,600 human service professionals have received training in the Smart Steps curriculum.
This program is implemented by human service professionals. Information on training for the facilitators was not located. Please use details in the Contact section to learn more.
Considerations for implementing this program include obtaining qualified human service professionals to be facilitators, acquiring meeting space, recruiting stepfamilies for participation, acquiring participants’ buy-in and commitment, and providing childcare for youth who are too young to attend sessions (i.e., under 6 years old).
The Clearinghouse can help address these considerations. Please call 1-877-382-9185 or email Clearinghouse@psu.edu
If you are interested in implementing Smart Steps, the Clearinghouse is interested in helping you!
Please call 1-877-382-9185 or email Clearinghouse@psu.edu
Stepfamilies participate in 6-weekly sessions that last 2 hours each and in an optional booster session 4 to 6 weeks after program completion.
The Smart Steps program curriculum costs $199 and includes leader lesson guides; background readings; resource list; two videos; program vignettes; the movie, Stepmom; and a CD with power point slides, hand-outs, and evaluation questionnaires.
To move the Smart Steps program to the Promising category on the Clearinghouse Continuum of Evidence, at least one evaluation should be performed demonstrating sustained, positive effects lasting at least six months from program completion that do not diminish over time.
The Clearinghouse can help you develop an evaluation plan to ensure the program components are meeting your goals. Please call 1-877-382-9185 or email Clearinghouse@psu.edu
Contact the Clearinghouse with any questions regarding this program.
Phone: 1-877-382-9185 Email: Clearinghouse@psu.edu
You may also contact the National Stepfamily Resource Center by visiting https://www.stepfamilies.info/contact/
https://www.stepfamilies.info/programs-services/smart-steps/; Higginbotham and Adler-Baeder (2008); Higginbotham and Adler-Baeder (2010); Higginbotham and Skogrand (2010); and Vaterlaus, Allgood, and Higginbotham (2012).
Higginbotham, B., & Adler-Baeder, F. (2008). The Smart Steps: Embrace the Journey program: Enhancing relational skills and relationship quality in remarriages and stepfamilies. The Forum for Family and Consumer Issues, 13(3), 1-5.
Higginbotham, B., & Adler-Baeder, F. (2010). Enhancing knowledge and agreement among ethnically and economically diverse couples in stepfamilies with the Smart Steps: Embrace the Journey program. Journal of Extension, 48(1), 1-5.
Higginbotham, B. J., & Skogrand, L. (2010). Relationship education with both married and unmarried stepcouples: An exploratory study. Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 9(2), 133-148.
Lucier‐Greer, M., Adler‐Baeder, F., Harcourt, K. T., & Gregson, K. D. (2014). Relationship education for stepcouples reporting relationship instability—Evaluation of the Smart Steps: Embrace the Journey curriculum. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 40(4), 454-469. https://doi.org/10.1111/jmft.12069
Reck, K., Higginbotham, B., & Dew, J. (2020). A longitudinal hierarchical examination of Smart Steps for Stepfamilies with ethnically and economically diverse couples. Journal of Family Issues, 41(2), 183-211. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X19869385
Adler-Baeder, F., Bradford, A., Skuban, E., Lucier-Greer, M., Ketring, S., & Smith, T. (2010). Demographic predictors of relationship and marriage education participants' pre-and post-program relational and individual functioning. Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 9(2), 113-132.
Higginbotham, B., Davis, P., Smith, L., Dansie, L., Skogrand, L., & Reck, K. (2012). Stepfathers and stepfamily education. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 53(1), 76-90. https://doi.org/10.1080/10502556.2012.635972
Higginbotham, B., Skogrand, L., & Torres, E. (2010). Stepfamily education: Perceived benefits for children. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 51(1), 36-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/10502550903423271
Higginbotham, B. J., Tulane, S., & Skogrand, L. (2012). Stepfamily education and changes in financial practices. Journal of Family Issues, 33(10), 1398-1420. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X12450000
Reck, K., Higginbotham, B., Skogrand, L., & Davis, P. (2012). Facilitating stepfamily education for Latinos. Marriage & Family Review, 48(2), 170-187. https://doi.org/10.1080/01494929.2011.631729
Skogrand, L., Dansie, L., Higginbotham, B. J., Davis, P., & Barrios-Bell, A. (2011). Benefits of stepfamily education: One-year post-program. Marriage & Family Review, 47(3), 149-163. https://doi.org/10.1080/01494929.2011.571634
Skogrand, L., Davis, P., & Higginbotham, B. (2011). Stepfamily education: A case study. Contemporary Family Therapy: An International Journal, 33(1), 61-70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-011-9141-y
Skogrand, L., Torres, E., & Higginbotham, B. J. (2010). Stepfamily education: Benefits of a group-formatted intervention. The Family Journal, 18(3), 234-240. https://doi.org/10.1177/1066480710372479
Vaterlaus, J. M., Allgood, S. M., & Higginbotham, B. J. (2012). Stepfamily education booster sessions. Social Work with Groups, 35(2), 150-163. https://doi.org/10.1080/01609513.2011.599017
