Key to Happiness/Grooming Warning Signs/Dads Talking More Openly

- Tweet0
- 0
- Pin It 0
- 0
- Subscribe to RSS
Subscribe

Subject: Key to Happiness/Grooming Warning Signs/Dads Talking More Openly

View online

Healthy Relationship News

August 2026

THE LATEST

Across Cultures, One Key to Happiness Stands Out
The Harvard Study of Adult Development
State of Our Unions

NEWS YOU CAN USE

Dads Today Talk More Freely with Their Teens About Sex and Relationships
Grooming Teenage Girls: The Warning Signs

AI AND RELATIONSHIPS

AI Companionship Poses Risks for Teen Development, Study Shows
How AI Substitutes Are Replacing Genuine Human Connection

TOOLS YOU CAN USE

Advice and Resources Created by and for Youth Researchers
Case Studies to Build Facilitators' Youth Engagement Skills
Critical Nuances on Positive Childhood Experiences for Population Health and Flourishing Impact
Belonging and Engagement in the Classroom

WEBINAR – August 12, 2026

How Teams Get Stuck: Navigating Relationship Skills and Real-Life

FUNDING STREAMS

General Departmental Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (GDSRAE)
Competitive Personal Responsibility Education Program
Title V Competitive Sexual Risk Avoidance

THE LATEST

Across Cultures, One Key to Happiness Stands Out

Decades of global surveys point to a single, consistent foundation of well-being: our relationships.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development

The longest study of human happiness ever run has followed the same people for more than 80 years—and its clearest finding isn't wealth, fame or fitness, but the quality of the relationships you carry with you into old age.

State of Our Unions

The Dating Recession: How bad is it and what can we do? A view through the 2025 National Dating Landscape Survey. Plus the latest on teen views of marriage and family.

NEWS YOU CAN USE

Dads Today Talk More Freely with Their Teens About Sex and Relationships

Fathers today are talking more openly with their teens about sex and relationships than their own dads did, and research shows these conversations boost teens' sexual health and family connection when fathers listen first and stay engaged.

Grooming Teenage Girls: The Warning Signs

Many parents talk with their children about stranger danger, but far fewer talk openly about grooming or unhealthy age-gap relationships.

AI AND RELATIONSHIPS

AI Companionship Poses Risks for Teen Development, Study Shows

New ASU research finds that chatbots have potential to benefit relational and emotional health, but lack needed safeguards

How AI Substitutes Are Replacing Genuine Human Connection

A research team warns that unregulated AI reliance could severely hijack healthy emotional development. The study highlights how current conversational tools lack developmental safeguards, frequently leading to the stagnation of real-world relationship skills.

TOOLS YOU CAN USE

Advice and Resources Created by and for Youth Researchers

When foster youth are involved in research about the child welfare system, the research becomes more accurate, more meaningful, and more likely to create real change. Hearing directly from those impacted helps ensure that programs, policies, and systems reflect the needs of youth. Authored by youth researchers, this zine (short magazine) reflects the voices and perspectives of young people with lived experience in foster care.

Belonging and Engagement in the Classroom

A 12-hour, self-paced virtual course for classroom teachers and staff who want to take a deeper dive into social and emotional learning (SEL) so they can leverage it to create a classroom where all students thrive.

Critical Nuances on Positive Childhood Experiences for Population Health and Flourishing Impact

For years, the science of childhood adversity told us what goes wrong. In 2019, Christina Bethell and her colleagues helped the world see what goes right — and why it is vitally important to a child's health and wellbeing across the lifespan. On Tuesday, August 11, Dr. Bethell will join PACEs Connection's monthly Community Manager and County-wide Cooperative of Communities Facilitators meeting to discuss critical nuances that ensure we advance PCEs, and why understanding these nuances is important as we advance PCEs for population health and flourishing impact.

Case Studies to Build Facilitators’ Youth Engagement Skills

Youth engagement is the cornerstone of developing effective programming for adolescents, yet many youth-serving professionals struggle to authentically collaborate with youth. Our experts have provided frontline facilitators and other youth-supporting professionals with a practical framework for understanding youth engagement, along with several case studies. Whether you’re just beginning or looking to deepen existing efforts, you’ll come away with fresh insight for creating stronger, more responsive programs for the young people you serve.

WEBINAR

August 12, 2026

How Teams Get Stuck:

Navigating Relationship Skills and Real-Life

People who support young people bring deep care, commitment, and skill to their work—but they are still human. Under stress, even the most thoughtful facilitators, educators, counselors, and helping professionals can become reactive, shut down, over-accommodate, or lose access to the very relationship skills they most want to model.

In this practical and compassionate webinar, Dovetail Learning and The Dibble Institute will explore what happens when caring people get stuck. Participants will be introduced to Dovetail’s concept of Protective Patterns—common ways people react when they feel overwhelmed, vulnerable, or under pressure—and will consider how those patterns affect communication, conflict, and connection with colleagues, partners, and the young people they serve.

Together, we’ll explore how curiosity can help interrupt unhelpful patterns and create more space for resilience, reflection, and repair. Participants will leave with practical tools they can use right away to strengthen relationships, navigate difficult moments, and support healthier interactions in their work and lives.

Objectives: Participants will be able to:

Identify common Protective Patterns in themselves and others during moments of stress.
Explain how stress can interfere with communication, connection, and healthy relationship skills.
Use curiosity-based practices to respond more effectively in moments of conflict, reactivity, or disconnection.

Presenters:

Meri McCoy-Thompson; Executive Director- Dovetail Learning
Jonelle Zachary- Outreach Coordinator- The Dibble Institute

Who should attend: Educators and teachers, school counselors, social workers, youth program staff and facilitators, helping professionals in high-stress roles, supervisors and team leads who support frontline staff, and anyone who teaches or models relationship and social-emotional skills.

When: August 12, 2026 @ 1:00pm Pacific/4:00pm Eastern

Duration: 60 minutes

Cost: Free!

CURRENT FUNDING STREAMS

General Departmental Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (GDSRAE)

Application Due Date: August 17, 2026

The Administration for Children and Families announces the availability of funds under the Sexual Risk Avoidance Education (SRAE) Program. The purpose of the SRAE Program is to fund projects to implement sexual risk avoidance education that teach participants how to voluntarily refrain from non-marital sexual activity. The services are targeted to participants that reside in areas with high rates of teen births and/or are at greatest risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The goals of SRAE are to empower participants to make healthy decisions, and provide tools and resources to prevent pregnancy, STIs, and youth engagement in other risky behaviors.

GDSRAE Grant Toolkit

Competitive Personal Responsibility Education Program

Application Due Date: August 17, 2026

The Family and Youth Services Bureau will be accepting applications for the development and implementation of the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) in states that do not accept FY2026 allocations for State PREP. This program supports educational projects for youth ages 10–19 and for pregnant and parenting youth under age 21, focusing on abstinence and contraception to prevent pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, and HIV/AIDS. Projects are also required to implement at least three of the following six adulthood preparation subjects: healthy relationships, adolescent development, financial literacy, parent-child communication, educational and career success, and healthy life skills.

Competitive PREP Grant Toolkit

Tribal Personal Responsibility Education Program (Tribal PREP)

Application Due Date: August 17, 2026

The Title V Competitive SRAE program competitively funds projects to implement sexual risk avoidance education that teaches youth ages 10-19 how to voluntarily refrain from non-marital sexual activity. This opportunity supports the development and implementation of such projects in states that do not accept FY 2026 allocations for Title V State SRAE.

Tribal PREP Grant Toolkit

Title V Competitive Sexual Risk Avoidance

Application Due Date: August 17, 2026

Competitive Title V Grant Toolkit

Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network

Application Due Date: August 10, 2026

The FRSAN program, under assistance listing number 10.525, is to establish a network that connects individuals who are engaged in farming, ranching, and other agriculture-related occupations to stress assistance programs, including evidence-based prevention education.

Consolidated Grant Program to Assist Children and Youth Affected by and to Engage Men and Youth in Preventing Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, Sexual Assault, and Stalking

Application Due Date: September 8, 2026

The Consolidated Grant Program to Assist Children and Youth Affected by and to Engage Men and Youth in Preventing Domestic Violence, Dating Violence, Sexual Assault, and Stalking (Consolidated Youth Grant Program) supports community-based efforts to develop or expand prevention, intervention, treatment, and response strategies addressing the needs of children and youth (ages 0-24) affected by domestic/dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, and sex trafficking. It also supports work with men and youth to prevent those crimes.

FORECASTED FUNDING STREAMS

Preventing Suicide and Interpersonal Violence Among Youth and Young Adults

Estimated Post Date: October 1, 2026

Estimated Due Date: December 1, 2026

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) seeks investigator-initiated research proposals to evaluate primary prevention-focused approaches to reduce suicide and interpersonal violence among youth and young adults (ages 10 to 24 years).

This NOFO will support the evaluation of existing primary prevention approaches (i.e., approaches that are already developed and implemented or have been shown to be ready for implementation) that have not yet undergone rigorous evaluation. For this announcement, "approaches" can include programs, policies, or practices.

Interrupting the Cycle of Violence Against Women Through Targeted Approaches: The We Care Initiative Department of Health and Human Services

Estimated Award Date: September 1, 2026

This initiative will solicit applications to support research employing a range of research designs and methods to expand the evidence base on approaches that address the context of people’s lives and living conditions to prevent, treat, and eliminate violence against women (VAW) to improve health outcomes for all.

Please mark our messages as non-spam and add our address to your inbox contacts book.

The Dibble Institute® is a national, independent non-profit that empowers youth and young adults with skills to build and sustain healthy interpersonal and romantic relationships.

The Dibble Institute® does not sell or share your contact information.

In most cases, we obtained your contact information when you provided it to us when purchasing materials, at a conference, or by attending a Dibble training or webinar; or we obtained it through internal research. If you no longer wish to receive emails from us, simply click the unsubscribe button at the bottom of this email.

See our privacy policy.

Subscribe

Subject: Key to Happiness/Grooming Warning Signs/Dads Talking More Openly