About the Parents Forever™ program

It’s no secret that divorce and separation can be an extremely stressful time for everyone in a family. In the early 1990s University of Minnesota Extension staff and partners began exploring the needs of families experiencing divorce. Could education help these families lessen the impacts of the divorce or separation?

The team noted that parents would benefit from information and strategies to help improve their:

• Self-care

• Parent-child relationships

• Coparenting relationship (relationship with their children’s other parent)

The team developed a curriculum, Parents Forever™: Education for Families in Transition. Testing started testing in 1994. This curriculum served, in part, as the foundation of the Minnesota legislature and policy on mandatory curriculum topics for parent education.

The original curriculum was composed of a facilitator guide, several parent handbooks, and other resources (slide sets, video, etc.). It launched to the public in 1999.

In the following years, Extension staff trained organizations to use the Parents Forever™ curriculum. At one point, up to 67 counties in Minnesota had established Parents Forever™ programs.

Parents Forever™ in-person programs started to see a drop in enrollment in the late 2000s. Given more and more parents had access to computers and the internet, they were looking for online options to meet the court mandate.

University of Minnesota Extension was approached by the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2011 about this issue. We partnered together to create and launch the Parents Forever™ Online Course for Parents in 2012. This was the first parent education online course approved by the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Later, we partnered with North Dakota State University Extension Service to adapt the online course specifically for North Dakota parents. The Parents Forever™ Online Course for North Dakota Parents meets the recommendations being asked by North Dakota courts. (Note, this version does not meet the standards for those going through the Minnesota court system.)

While content updates were made throughout in the years, the team made more extensive revisions in 2014. The Parents Forever™ curriculum and all related resource were revamped.

Parents Forever™ is now organized into five main sessions:

1. Parents Forever™ course introduction

2. Taking care of yourself

3. Taking care of your children

4. Being successful with coparenting

5. Parents Forever™ course conclusion

These five sessions comprise a continuum. They are intended to be taught in order. Get more information about the current Parents Forever™ curriculum.

Given the extent of the changes, facilitators and coordinators who had used the curriculum in the past were asked to be retrained. This new training is required of anyone wanting access to the new curriculum. Get more information about the Parents Forever™ facilitator training.

This retraining helped to ensure that all in-person courses meet the same high standards. See more about the Parents Forever™ in-person courses for parents.

When we say that Parents Forever™ is a research-based curriculum, what do we mean? We mean that it is:

• Informed by research

• Continuously updated to reflect emerging research

• Rigorously evaluated and studied to:

  • Document program impact

  • Continuously self-improve

Explore the following resources to learn about research in support of and about the curriculum, and the impact of Parents Forever™ impact on Minnesota.

• What is the impact of divorce on children?

• What is divorce education and does it work?

• What is the Parents Forever™ theory of change?

• Parents Forever™ research and evaluation projects

• Why Parents Forever™ is the right choice

• Parents Forever™ annual report (PDF)