Major items in this issue: 

Marriage Enrichment Programs 

Understanding Positive and Negative Items in the Report 

PREPARE-CC : A Further Update 

Season's Greeting 
The staff of PREPARE-ENRICH would like to thank you all for your work with us in 2003 and hope that you will have a blessed Christmas-time and a great New Year. 

Thanks to Judy Ward 
 We want to thank Judy Ward, one of our Trainers in Victoria, for all her valuable time and expertise that she has contributed to training in Victoria over the last five years.  Other commitments have made it necessary for her to withdraw from training at this time and so we wish her well in the future.  Judy will continue to work as a PREPARE administrator. Thanks for all your highly professional contributions Judy. 

New Trainer in Victoria 
We welcome Jenny Cleal as a new Trainer in Victoria.  Jenny works with Lifeworks Relationship Education and Counselling Service and has been the Victorian State Representative of MAREAA since 2002.  She is also a member of the editorial board of Threshold, a magazine about marriage education published quarterly in Australia.  She joins Lynley Giles and Ian Cutlack in providing training in Victoria. Thanks for making yourself available to us Jenny. 

Marriage Enrichment - ENRICH: A time-saving resource?  
Several trainers have reported that conducting marriage enrichment, although seen as a desirable pastoral role by many clergy, is not one for which a great deal of time is available.  ENRICH can actually save a great deal of time when conducting work with individual couples – it gets a couple talking to each other and efficiently identifies areas of strength and issues for growth .  It can also be used as a basis for groupwork - one excellent way of doing this is outlined in the following article by John and Dorothy Wheeler.  We encourage you to think about extending your training to include ENRICH if you haven't already done so (see the Training Day schedule on the web site) or call our office on 02 9545 4566 for details).  If you are already trained, are you using the material as much as you could, both to pastor couples effectively and to work as time-effectively as possible?  ENRICH is an enormously valuable resource but is not being used to its full potential. 

Using ENRICH in a Marriage Enrichment Program for Couples 

In providing feedback to couples who have taken the ENRICH inventory, there are several advantages in working with a group. Seven couples is probably the maximum size. Working with a group: 

· provides the strength of interactive peer group learning, 

· eases away the inter-marital taboo that we should never share marital issues with others, 

· ‘normalises’ the difficulties over money, time and sex that almost all couples 
experience at some stage and, 

· allows a much more efficient use of time by the educator(s).

The designers of the original ‘Growing Together’ program envisaged its use by engaged or seriously dating couples and by newlywed couples about six months into their marriage.  At this stage couples are becoming open to the desirability of developing new skills and resolving tensions.  We have led effective and enjoyable groups that included couples married for from 3 to 30 years or more. There is benefit in having a mix of marital experience in the group. A group can be led/facilitated by an individual but a married couple who are able to share experiences honestly, dialogue to illustrate points, and provide variation in the presentations are the ideal leaders. 

In encouraging couples to join a group it is well to stress that its purpose is, to borrow a phrase, to ‘make good marriages great’ and that it will be an enjoyable time of exploring their relationship, identifying strengths and enhancing some skills - it is not a ‘therapy group’ and is not appropriate for couples with serious problems. 

If the inventory report reveals that a couple falls into the ‘Devitalised’ or ‘Conflicted’ categories and is fairly dysfunctional in some areas it is advisable to encourage them to withdraw from the group. The body language, if nothing else, of a thoroughly conflicted couple is not conducive to group discussion and the atmosphere of the weekend.  If the administrator feels competent to do so he or she may offer them a series of private sessions or may encourage the couple to seek professional counselling. 

Our procedure is to get the couples together two weeks before the weekend to meet us and each other, to explain the format of the program and to do the inventories. A ‘coffee and dessert’ or pot-luck dinner evening is helpful for the process of getting to know each other and easing any tensions. The National Office supplies a sufficient number of questionnaire booklets and forms on request. If advised when the response forms are submitted, the office gives quantity discounts and prints ‘Couple Reports’ not the normal ‘Counsellor Reports’. The format is similar but Couple Reports are designed to be lent to the couples for the duration of each session. Couple Reports do not contain information on the couple type, the responses to abuse items, the numerical responses for all items, the percentile scores and offer only a paraphrase of each item (to further protect the copyright of the specifically phrased items). When using only the sanitised Couple Report it is difficult to work out, for some couples, just what is going on and it is strongly recommended to ask the office to print you Counsellor Reports simultaneously for a small extra fee. 

At this first session it is a good idea to discuss and agree on a set of ground rules for the group such as: 

· everything shared within the group is confidential 

· the viewpoints of others are accepted 

· all members have time to speak if desired and, 

· when one speaks for a couple both are fully agreed on what is said. 

The Growing Together manual suggests seven working sessions: Family-of-Origin; Relationship Strengths and Growth Areas; Communication for Understanding; Managing Anger and Conflict; Intimacy and Sexuality; Financial Management and Planning for Growth. We like to vary and combine these topics a bit depending on what the group appears to need and what they ask for as we go along. On residential weekends, make the session on sexuality the last one for the day after a pleasant dinner together!  Ideally each session involves: 

· a period of connecting and developing rapport 

· a discovery stage where couples assess where they are in their relationship and 
where they want to go 

· a learning stage discovering skills, finding alternative ways of thinking and 
acting, new options for troublesome issues 

· a contracting stage with opportunity to develop a specific plan for action for 
change in their marital interaction and, 

·  a closing stage of reinforcement, celebration and affirmation. 

The late John Robson, who brought PREPARE-ENRICH to Australia, always offered to have a private session with each couple after the weekend and we have certainly found this to be a helpful and well appreciated practice where feasible. 

Evaluation forms are provided after the last session and feedback on the program has been consistently positive.  All marriages need maintenance work and the use of this program with small groups of couples provides them with a dependable and accurate review and introduces the skills and models to enhance any relationship. A useful pack containing the Leaders’ Manual, a video and a sample of a Couple Report is available for $45. It is also possible to run a similar interactive workshop with a group of pre-marital couples who have taken the PREPARE inventory. 

Positive and Negative Items - Positive Doesn’t Always Mean Good or Desirable 
This item appeared as the March 2003 Hint, but we have had a number of Administrators suggesting this would be a useful item to repeat to a wider audience in the Newsletter.  In the Counsellor Report provided to PREPARE Administrators, the items in each content area are listed and either (+) or (-) appears in front of each item.  These symbols simply indicate the direction of the scoring that applies to each item.  Agreement with a (+) item contributes to a high score in the content area of that item and agreement with a (-) has the same effect. 

Example:  Role Relationship 
 
       (+)  89. A career can be equally important to a man or a woman. 

       (-)  117. If a couple has young children, the wife should not work 
          outside the home.

Of course, sometimes the positive and negative scoring does clearly correspond to good/desirable and bad/undesirable, as in the case of the satisfaction content areas.  This is simply due to the fact that it is obvious that it is better to be highly satisfied than dissatisfied. 

It is certainly not so obvious in the following content areas and so care should be taken when talking about positive and negative items in these areas: 
 
                               Role relationships 
                               Couple Closeness 
                               Family Closeness 
                               Couple Flexibility 
                               Family Flexibility 
 
In the case of the closeness and flexibility items, EXTREME high or low scores may indicate matters of concern.  For example, either excessively and suffocatingly close relationships or excessively disconnected relationships can be identified from either (+) or (-) responses to item 150. 
 
      (+) 150.  Our family liked to do things with only members of the immediate 
                     family 

Agreement with this (+) item could be a matter for concern, possibly indicating excessive closeness.  However, whether this is the case would depend upon the pattern of responses to the other items in the Family Closeness content area. Remember, the (+) and (-) symbols simply indicate the direction of the scoring. 

A further update on PREPARE-CC 
PREPARE-CC was launched in February 2003 and feedback indicates that Administrators and couples are enthusiastic about the new material. In the 10 months since the launch, over 1,000 couples have already taken PREPARE-CC. The new inventory is designed to be more suitable to couples already living together (with or without children), particularly those who are intending to marry. A new category called Cohabitation Issues is included, replacing the Marriage Expectations category in PREPARE.  This category is intended to assist couples explore the impact that living together has had upon their relationship and to provide a springboard for considering the further changes and effects that might emerge when they marry.  The other categories remain as they are in PREPARE, but 40 of the questions have been revised so that they have greater relevance to cohabiting couples intending to marrying, in that they that tap into issues that may have arisen during the experience of cohabitation. 

How to obtain PREPARE-CC  
The cost is $15 and this includes access to PREPARE-CC processing, 3 item booklets, 4 answer sheets and an eight page mini manual describing the new materials and providing an overview of relevant Australian and American research relevant to cohabiting couples intending marry.  You may order by email info@prepare-enrich.com.au).  Simply indicate that you want PREPARE-CC and be sure to provide your usercode and current mailing address.  We will invoice you when we post the materials to you. You are also welcome to telephone the National Office (02 9545 4566) or just put a note in your next set of answer sheets sent in for processing. 

Training Matters 
For a current list of Training Days go to or click on the link below:  

www.prepare-enrich.com.au/administrators/trainingdays.html

www.prepare-enrich.com.au/administrators/skillsdays.html

    * Psychology and Christian Theology 
    * Self-esteem and God's grace 
    * The Role of Insight in Pastoral Counselling 
    * Leadership in the Church and Family 

… then you might consider purchasing Beyond Rivalry - Psychology and Theology as Complements, a new book written by Dr. Alan Craddock (a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Sydney and National Coordinator of Prepare-Enrich). This book describes and applies a constructive form of relationship between the disciplines of Christian theology and psychology - Psychology and Theology as Complements. This view is contrasted with four other viewpoints: Psychology as Foe, Psychology as Support, Psychology as a Partner in Integration and Psychology as Contaminant. While not directly a PREPARE-ENRICH resource, the two chapters on leadership in the church and family draw on the ideas associated with the concepts of cohesion, flexibility and balance, all of which play an important role in the PREPARE-ENRICH materials. If you wish to order a copy simply email our office or telephone (02) 9545 4566. The cost is $24.95 including GST and postage). We will mail you a copy and invoice you accordingly.