If We Build It, They Will Come: Exploring Policy and Practice Implications of Public Support for Couple and Relationship Education for Lower Income and Relationally Distressed Couples ANGELA B. BRADFORD* ALAN J. HAWKINS* JENNIFER ACKER † Over the past decade, public funding for Couple and Relationship Education programs has expanded. As program administrators have been able to extend their reach to low- income individuals and couples using this support, it has become apparent that greater numbers of relationally distressed couples are attending classes than previously antici- pated. Because psychoeducational programs for couples have traditionally served less distressed couples, this dynamic highlights the need to examine the policy and practice implications of more distressed couples accessing these services. This paper reviews some of the most immediate issues, including screening for domestic violence and couple needs, pedagogical considerations, and the potential integration of therapy and education ser- vices. We also make suggestions for future research that can inform policy and practice efforts. Keywords: Couples; Distressed; Funding; Implications; Low-income; Relationship Education Fam Proc x:1–16, 2015 INTRODUCTION A lmost two decades ago, the U.S. Congress passed and President Clinton signed into law the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. TANF overhauled U.S. welfare policy, replacing federal entitlements for low-income families with state- directed efforts to encourage and support work for all TANF recipients. Also central to TANF purposes were discouraging nonmarital childbearing and encouraging two-parent families and marriage (Ooms & Wilson, 2004). Many policy makers had become concerned about the role of welfare policy in family instability (Haskins & Sawhill, 2009). Of course, they were also concerned with the costs of family instability. One scholar has conserva- tively estimated the public cost of family instability to be $112 billion a year (Scafidi, 2008), a figure that does not include private-sector and personal costs. Marital distress has been estimated to account for 30% of sick time (Gottman, 1998) and $6.8 billion in losses for U.S. businesses (Forthofer, Markman, Cox, Stanley, & Kessler, 1996). Addition- ally, it has been linked to lower work satisfaction (Rogers & May, 2003; Sandberg et al., *School of Family Life, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. † The Parenting Center, Forth Worth, TX. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Angela B. Bradford, School of Family Life, Brigham Young University, 239 TLRB, Provo, UT 84602. E-mail: angela_bradford@byu.edu. 1 Family Process, Vol. x, No. x, 2015 © 2015 Family Process Institute doi: 10.1111/famp.12151