The coParenter Project: building a healthier Los Angeles two coParents at a time

coParenter Project targets nearly 3M separated, divorced and never-married Angelino parents, empowering them to save money, stay out of court and make better decisions for their children. The initiative offers high-quality education, personalized coaching and access to a state-of-the-art coParenting management and mediation platform. #coParenterProject, a moderated twitter initiative, helps kids exposed to parents’ separation find answers, get help and build community.

There are almost 3 million Angelinos in an active coParenting relationship with an additional 200,000 Los Angeles residents joining that community every year. And as the exponentially larger millennial generation- many of whom opt out of marriage altogether- reach the ‘Age of Conscious Uncoupling,’ that number will surely skyrocket. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, high conflict divorce/separation is the second (out of ten) most common Adverse Childhood Event (ACE) which have been proven to lead to negative health, academic, and economic outcomes in adults. Conversely, children growing up with coParents who collaborate, cooperate and effectively coParenting, thrive. But catastrophic cuts to an already-overwhelmed court system have eliminated mediation, coParenting resources and self-help programs, leaving separating, divorced and never-married parents with few options for resolving conflict. This lack of resources force many Angelenos to manage conflict and every day coParenting issues on their own. Unfortunately, a disproportionate amount of parents end up litigating in court leading to advanced economic hardship for families as well as ACEs- which have documented connections to negative health, academic, and economic outcomes in adults. It doesn’t have to be this way. A family’s marital status does not, in and of itself, lead to negative outcomes for children. coParenter Project disrupts the cycle of conflict through three interrelated strategies. First, our project will deliver research-based coParenting education to 1,000 coParents through a network of community-based organizations. Second, we will distribute 5,000 free licenses of coParenter, a coParenting management and mediation platform offering family communication, scheduling and management tools, automated conflict resolution and live, professional coaching to help coParents resolve disputes, make agreements and make better, more informed decisions for their kids. Finally, #coParentingProject, a Twitter based learning network for children of coParents, will connect youth in coParenting families with each other, to mitigate social isolation, build a community, and share information and resources in a safe, anonymous environment. We anticipate 10,000 tweets between kids helping each other through this innovative, first-of-its-kind network. These three activities will directly address the LA2050 live metric of disrupting adverse childhood events and have wide impact on child and family well-being across LA County.

Our goal is to measurably improve coParenting for over 12,000 individual children in Los Angeles County. In addition to utilizing powerful digital measurement tools that account for access and engagement, we will also measure quantifiable change in coParenting knowledge and active behavior achieved through utilization of the platform. To this end, we have three primary impact outcomes and measurement strategies. First, our coParenting curriculum is designed to increase awareness of the importance of coParenting and introduce coParenting best practices which will be measured by pre- and post- surveys of workshop participants. Second, the coParenting app will directly lead to more effective coParenting behaviors and reduced conflict measured by our proprietary coParenting scoring algorithm. This score draws from real time user data to measure collaboration, conflict levels, and coParenting optimization. Lastly, #coParenterProject is designed to build a community of young people from coParenting families to mitigate stigma, social isolation, and to share information. Measurements will include total number of community members, total number of questions asked, average user time on platform, and user surveys.