CoupleCARE

Couple Commitment and Relationship Enhancement

By Prof. Kim W.Halford

Good relationships and good mental health go hand in hand. That’s why practitioners should have a client-friendly relationship-strengthening tool to use in their day-to-day practice, whether working with individuals or couples.

CoupleCARE is the only Australian-developed program for use by a range of mental health and education professionals evaluated and developed over 30 years of marriage and couple relationship research, including eight randomised control efficacy studies. It has helped over 30,000 couples build and maintain a better relationship, supporting themselves and their families.

A unique feature of the program is its accessibility. Research shows that many couples fail to attend traditional face-to-face relationship group programs due to travel and time restrictions and a belief that their relationship with their partner is private. CoupleCARE allows couples the option to complete the program in the privacy of their own home via telephone, online chat, or video call support.

The program uses adult learning principles to ensure its effectiveness. Importantly, couples are NOT taught to behave in particular ways. Instead, couples are encouraged to reflect, choose their goals, and actively decide what is important to them in a relationship. The program consists of 6 Learning Units of about two hours each, usually run over 6 weeks. For each Unit, the couple watches a 12-minute- to 15-minute video presentation introducing key ideas about successful relationships and demonstrating crucial relationship skills. The couple then complete exercises to apply the concepts to their relationship. They do this via discussion and practical exercises, which each Unit takes 45 to 50 minutes to complete. The latest update to the program allows practitioners to use downloadable PDF handouts to supply clients with their own printable Unit Guides to complete the exercises after watching the video.

CoupleCARE enriches a couple’s relationship by helping them to:

• assess their relationship strengths and vulnerabilities
• define the relationship they want
• develop key relationship skills
• identify individual actions to strengthen their relationship.

The CoupleCARE program resources are:

The Educator’s Manual. This includes a complete copy of the 6 Couple Guide Unit handouts as an appendix, an overview of the program, suggestions on how to make it work most effectively, a semi-structured intake interview template, and detailed suggestions on conducting the program in flexible delivery mode.

The CoupleCARE Video Guide. This is a professionally directed high-quality DVD featuring scenes from various couples that illustrate the issues, behaviours and results discussed in each Unit topic.

The CoupleCARE Unit Guides. This comprises six downloadable and printable PDF booklets covering Self-change, Communication, Intimacy and Caring, Managing Differences, Sexual Intimacy, and Looking Ahead.

CoupleCARE’s developer is Emeritus Professor Kim Halford, an international leader in couple relationship education and therapy. He has written over 220 scientific publications, including 168 refereed journal articles papers, and published the seminal reference texts The Clinical Handbook of Marital and Couple Interventions (1998), Brief Couple Therapy (2001), Marriage and Relationship Education: What Works and How to Provide It (2011), and Cross-Cultural Family Research and Practice (2020). He has trained over 12,000 professionals in couples therapy and relationship education across more than a dozen countries.