Group items tagged

Society for Research in Child Development Patrice L. Engle Dissertation Grant for Global Early Child Development The Patrice L. Engle Dissertation Grant provides support for students interested in a career in global early child development who are from or doing research in low- or middle-income countries. The Grant includes US $5,000 to support dissertation research and a 2-year student membership to SRCD. Applicant Eligibility and Responsibility 1. Dissertation research in global early child development with a one-year Grant for $5,000. The developmental focus of the research should include children, prenatal to 6 years of age living in low- or middle- income countries, as defined by the World Bank.  Potential topics could include (but not limited to): The effectiveness of different models of parenting support on early child development. Examination of how child care programs promote child development and family involvement. The effectiveness of 2-generation programs that provide maternal and child support. Innovative strategies to integrate programs that promote early child development with health or nutritional services for young children. Innovative strategies to integrate child development interventions with social protection services or programs to promote maternal mental health or education. Innovative strategies to involve fathers and other extended family members in early child development programs. Development of measurement strategies, indicators, and assessment tools for children and family interactions that can be implemented with reliability in low resource settings. Strategies for effective scale-up of demonstration programs.

The purpose of this FOA would be to establish, by awarding one cooperative agreement, a National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) to advance federal priorities to improve safety, permanency, and well-being by building the capacity of child welfare professionals and improving the organizations that recruit, train, supervise, manage, and retain them. The Workforce Institute will play a national leadership role in the field of child welfare in the following broad areas: (1)Demonstrating how university partnerships support workforce development; (2) Implementing organizational interventions to improve workforce recruitment and retention; (3) Providing leadership training across the child welfare career spectrum; (4) Developing cross system approaches to improve worker and child outcomes; and (5) Building evidence of best practices in workforce development. A broad range of activities will be undertaken by the Workforce Institute to promote effective child welfare practice, enhance agency efforts to create supportive work environments, and improve worker recruitment and retention outcomes by: Implementing an innovative, comprehensive and integrated organizational, educational, and professional development approach to effective child welfare workforce development building on the last two iterations of NCWWI work; Implementing effective workforce organizational interventions that result in improved agency climate, worker preparation, recruitment, and retention outcomes for agencies; such as reduction in emotional stress and worker burnout, increased length of stay for workers, changes in worker attitude and satisfaction, increased recruitment, etc.; Demonstrating expertise in collecting and disseminating information about effective and promising workforce practices in innovative ways;

This targeted 5-year cooperative agreement is to be awarded to create a national center of excellence to develop, implement and evaluate curriculum in child welfare agency settings that will: Support the child welfare workforce to better understand social and emotional needs of children and families involved in the child welfare system. Support the child welfare workforce to better screen and assess for social and emotional needs of children and families. Support the child welfare workforce to understand the effective interventions and active ingredients of those interventions and how to ensure children and families receive those interventions. Increase exposure to active ingredients and Evidence Based Practices for agency staff through enhanced curriculum and practicums. Provide professional development opportunities for agency staff by developing, delivering, and evaluating course offerings, continuing education, and certificate programs aimed at addressing the shortage of child welfare practitioners prepared to deliver evidence based child and family treatment. Provide curriculum aimed at assisting case managers to make excellent decisions about how to refer and evaluate the effectiveness of the services provided to the children and families in their care. Develop decision making tools for agency leadership that might assist them in assessing their current mental health service array. These tools would provide direction about the cost and effectiveness of the mental health services in their current service array, assist the administrator in evaluating if the current mental health services are achieving intended outcomes, and provide guidance on best practice in implementing evidence based treatment services.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) plans to solicit applications for Child Care Policy Research Partnership grants. These four-year cooperative agreements will be conducted through partnerships between CCDF Lead Agencies in states, territories, or tribes and researchers from institutions of higher education, research organizations, and other eligible organizations. Applications are invited from CCDF Lead Agencies, institutions of higher education, research organizations, and other organizations with proven expertise conducting policy research. The work supported by this grant program should be collaborative from start to finish. Specifically, the CCDF Lead Agency and their research partners need to work together throughout all phases of the project. Child Care Policy Research Partnership grantees will be expected to pursue research questions of national and state relevance. Therefore, grantees are encouraged to include other local and state child care stakeholders. These projects are intended to add to our knowledge about the efficacy of child care subsidy policies and quality improvement initiatives that support employment and self-sufficiency outcomes for parents, increase low-income families' access to high quality child care programs, and promote positive learning and school readiness outcomes for children. Examples of priority questions include, but are not limited to: effects of policy changes since the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014, supports for family child care providers, consumer education, licensing and monitoring, and efforts to build the supply of high-quality care. Funding is subject to availability of funds and the best interests of the federal government.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement is to establish by cooperative agreement a National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (Center). The project will have a 60-month project period with five 12-month budget periods. The Center will be the primary provider of training and technical assistance to build the capacity of Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) State Lead Agencies (SLAs), and their partners, to implement successful strategies that strengthen families and prevents child maltreatment. The key focus of the Center will be to enhance the ability of SLAs to effectively implement the requirements of the program and support evidence-informed and evidence-based child maltreatment prevention programs and activities. The Center will facilitate lead agency efforts in the planning and development of a network of interdisciplinary community-based programs and activities designed to strengthen and support families to prevent child abuse and neglect. The Center will also promote stronger linkages between the CBCAP SLA and the child welfare, as well as other child and family systems.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) invites eligible entities to submit competitive grant applications for funding under the Refugee Family Child Care Microenterprise Development Project (RFCCMED). Through the RFCCMED program, ORR will provide funding for applicants which, through internal capacity and partnerships, will provide refugee participants with training and technical assistance in professional child care, microenterprise development, and financial literacy; assist refugee participants in navigating the child care licensing process; and provide direct financial assistance as needed to enable participants to prepare their homes for child care business operation. The three main objectives of RCCMED are to 1) help refugees to achieve economic self-sufficiency by establishing licensed FCC businesses; 2) help refugee families gain access to licensed FCC businesses which will meet the early care and developmental needs of refugee children; and 3) assist refugees in learning how to navigate mainstream child care services.

ACF is funding a cooperative agreement to sponsor the Child Development Research Fellowship that gives child development professionals from the academic research community the opportunity to experience policy research relevant to programs serving low income children and families. The goal of the fellowship program is to expose researchers to policy environments, particularly at the federal level, whereby they gain skills and expertise for policy-relevant research. The program is intended to stimulate the fellows' knowledge of child development research and evaluation, particularly regarding services for low income children and families, and to inform their process of developing long-term, policy-relevant research and evaluation agendas. The public will benefit from the increased availability of researchers highly skilled and experienced in policy- and program-relevant research and evaluation. Fellows will engage on a full-time basis for a period of one year (with a possible second or third year at the discretion of the grantee and depending on funding availability). Fellows will be exposed to the broader child development policy environment, particularly at the federal level, and to the policy research community through activities organized and conducted by the grantee. The cooperative agreement will require active partnership between the successful applicant and OPRE.

The Administration for Children and Families, Children’s Bureau announces the availability of one grant to: (1) implement a multi-system approach among public and private agencies integrating community and faith-based to promote effective partnerships; (2) develop or enhance a navigator program to meet caregivers own needs and the needs of the children they are raising; (3) utilize intensive family-finding activities, including search technology, effective family engagement, collaboration with child support, and other means to identify biological family members for the target population to create a greater volume of relationships and connectedness within their families and establish permanent family placements when appropriate; and (4) implement family group decision-making (FGDM) meetings for children in the child welfare system. The project funded under this announcement will be implemented through strong collaboration between the grantee and the public child welfare agency. The successful applicant will facilitate cross collaboration and data sharing among relevant agencies, including the courts, child welfare, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), aging and family caregiver support programs, child support, fatherhood programs, education, domestic violence, mental health and substance abuse in order to better identify, assess, and service kinship caregivers and at-risk families within the child welfare system.

Thanks to the generous support of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago is pleased to offer the Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child Well-Being. These fellowships are designed to identify and develop a new generation of leaders interested in and capable of creating practice and policy initiatives that will enhance child development and improve the nation's ability to prevent all forms of child maltreatment.

Thanks to the generous support of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago is pleased to offer the Doris Duke Fellowships for the Promotion of Child Well-Being. These fellowships are designed to identify and develop a new generation of leaders interested in and capable of creating practice and policy initiatives that will enhance child development and improve the nation's ability to prevent all forms of child maltreatment.

This program will fund project sites to develop a community-based, multidisciplinary, comprehensive approach to responding to youth with sexual behavior problems, their child victims, and their families as well as a training and technical assistance provider to support project sites in developing intervention models. The purpose of this program is to prevent sexual reoffending, promote healing, and provide services for victims and families. The program will focus on interfamilial and/or coresidential child victims and youth with problematic sexual behaviors. Examples of these types of sexual behaviors include, but are not limited to, sexual contact between children who do not know each other well (i.e., foster home or institutional setting); sexual contact between children of different ages, sizes, and developmental levels; aggressive or coerced sexual contact; sexual contact that causes harm to the child or others; and sexual contact that causes another child to be highly upset and/or fearful. Applicants should propose comprehensive, evidence-based intervention strategies for serving both the child victim(s) and the youth with sexual behavior problems and their parents/caregivers.

When children are placed in out-of-home care (also called foster care), it is important that child welfare agencies find safe, permanent homes for them as quickly as possible. In many circumstances, children can be reunited with their families, but in some cases, children find homes with relatives or adoptive families. Child and Family Services Reviews (CFSRs) have consistently found that many child welfare systems need to improve their adoption work, as evidenced by their difficulty in achieving substantial conformity on permanency outcomes. These shortcomings include failure to make concerted efforts towards timely permanency for adoption and preserving family connections; inadequate engagement of parents, children and youth in case planning; limited and ineffective service provision; insufficient frequency and duration of child visitations/parenting time; punitive uses of visitation/parenting time; delays in establishing the goal of adoption; a lack of meaningful concurrent planning; and lengthy appeal processes for contested termination of parental rights. These permanency outcomes relate to basic social work, legal, and judicial practices that impact adoption outcomes and also have effects on the safety and well-being of children in care. The purpose of this funding opportunity is to award up to five 5-year cooperative agreements for the development, implementation, and evaluation of strategies that focus on better adoption outcomes by improving basic social work, legal, and judicial practice in order to eliminate systemic barriers to: adoption; preventing entry into foster care; and other forms of permanency. Due to the intersection of permanency, safety, and well-being, an effective system reform effort focused on improving adoption outcomes by improving concurrent planning and reducing time to permanency will also require attention to safety and well-being outcomes.

DLS supports fundamental research that increases our understanding of cognitive, linguistic, social, cultural, and biological processes related to children's and adolescents' development and learning.  Research supported by this program will add to our basic knowledge of how people learn and the underlying developmental processes that support learning, with the objective of leading to better educated children and adolescents who grow up to take productive roles as workers and as citizens. Among the many research topics supported by DLS are: developmental cognitive neuroscience; development of higher-order cognitive processes; transfer of knowledge from one domain or situation to another; use of molecular genetics to study continuities and discontinuities in development; development of peer relations and family interactions; multiple influences on development, including the impact of family, school, community, social institutions, and the media; adolescents' preparation for entry into the workforce; cross-cultural research on development and learning; and the role of cultural influences and demographic characteristics on development. Additional priorities include research that: incorporates multidisciplinary, multi-method, microgenetic, and longitudinal approaches; develops new methods, models, and theories for studying learning and development; and integrates different processes (e.g., learning, memory, emotion), levels of analysis (e.g., behavioral, social, neural), and time scales (e.g. infancy, middle childhood, adolescence).

Under the 2016 - 2020 Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS), USAID/Zimbabwe anticipates awarding a five-year $25 million cooperative agreement to provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MOHCC) at the national level and in Manicaland province. This award will be made through a full and open competition, under which any type of organization is eligible to apply. Building on the achievements of current USAID-supported activities, the purpose of the activity is improved maternal, youth, and child health and survival in beneficiary communities and populations. This activity will improve the health of women, youth, and children in Manicaland by strengthening maternal, newborn, child health and family planning (integrated MNCH-FP) service delivery throughout the continuum of care, i.e., from the home, to the community, to the primary care facility, and to the tertiary referral hospital. Continuum of care refers to a concept involving a system that guides and tracks patients over time through a comprehensive array of health services spanning all levels and intensity of care. Integrated MNCH-FP service delivery refers to combining together MNCH and FP health services in order to expand access to care, increase efficiencies, and improve health outcomes. The activity will also increase access to a broader range of family planning methods through outreach services at the national level.

The purpose of this funding opportunity announcement (FOA) is to award one cooperative agreement to develop a state-of-the-art foster/adoptive parent training program to include intensive preparation and development components that reflect the capacities required of successful foster/adoptive parents. This is intended to be a product that could be utilized by all states, tribes, and territories and consistently applied wherever implemented. Development of this program would include research on the common characteristics of individuals and their foster/adoptive families that have succeeded in terms of well-being and stability. Common characteristics of families that are more likely to foster and/or adopt harder to place children/youth and are successful and remain committed to the relationship will be identified and integrated into the program. The program would be inclusive of development, training, and capacity needs of individuals/families that are interested in becoming foster parents, as well as those who are interested in fostering with the intention to eventually adopt; therefore many concepts would be in common for foster and adoptive parents. There would be particular focus for foster parents on working on reunification efforts with birth parents and for adoption there would be particular focus on the common adoption issues pertinent to all types of adoption, i.e., child welfare, private domestic, and international. The initial year would entail an extensive review of all current training and preparation programs and include new intervention strategies that foster/adoptive parents should be skilled in as they develop as foster and adoptive parents. The initial year would also involve the basic development of the new intensive training modules.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Head Start (OHS) announces the availability of approximately $7,582,500 to be competitively awarded for the purpose of operating a National Center on Health, Behavioral Health, and Safety (NC HBHS). The NC HBHS will provide training and technical assistance (TTA) that reflects current evidence, is research-informed, and promotes best practices. The NC HBHS will strengthen professional development outcomes for staff and improve outcomes for children and families enrolled in Head Start and/or Early Head Start programs. The NC HBHS TTA efforts will lead to improved health, behavioral health, and safety of children and families. Because of the complex work the NC HBHS will conduct, the recipient will be expected to bring together knowledgeable subrecipients within the fields child nutrition and oral health; physical activity; health (including hearing and vision screening); behavioral health promotion and prevention, including the promotion of mental health, resilience and wellbeing; and the prevention of mental illness and substance use disorders; safety practices; child and adult trauma; child incidents and maltreatment; emergency preparedness, response and recovery; prenatal care; environmental health and safety; and staff wellness.

: The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to solicit proposals for a grant to develop and expand text and chat-based capabilities for child maltreatment prevention, resource sharing, detection, and reporting. In doing this work, the grantee is required to (1) Determine best practices and protocols pertaining to the use of text and chat-based technology within the child abuse and neglect reporting context; (2) Identify effective strategies for appropriate communication, identity verification, and privacy protection for youth who may be victims of maltreatment; and (3) Develop strategies for effectively sharing resources with youth who may be experiencing maltreatment. The protocols and strategies should be widely disseminated and applicable to national hotline environments. Applicants must possess the capacity to coordinate with hotlines administered by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) such as the National Domestic Violence Hotline and the National Human Trafficking Hotline. This grant will be for one 24-month project period.

NIFA requests applications for the Army Family Advocacy Program: Research and Prevention (ARMY) for fiscal year (FY) 2016 to 1) determine the effectiveness for child and domestic/partner abuse case treatments for Army Medical Command and 2) develop evidence-based information for prevention of child abuse and domestic/partner abuse for Army Installation Management Command.

NIFA requests applications for the Army Family Advocacy Program: Research and Prevention (ARMY) for fiscal year (FY) 2016 to 1) determine the effectiveness for child and domestic/partner abuse case treatments for Army Medical Command and 2) develop evidence-based information for prevention of child abuse and domestic/partner abuse for Army Installation Management Command.

The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services (ODJFS) releases this Request for Proposals (RFP) number JFSR2021228184, Six-Year Strategic Planning Services, on behalf of the Ohio Children's Trust Fund (OCTF) for the purpose of obtaining a qualified vendor to conduct a current state analysis and facilitate strategic planning activities, resulting in the development a six-year strategic plan. This shall be inclusive of both operational and contingency plans, that furthers the mission of the OCTF in its efforts to prevent child maltreatment in the state of Ohio and raise awareness pertaining to the programming and initiatives that are implemented and funded by the OCTF throughout the state. The OCTF is seeking proposals from vendors who have experience developing strategic plans for entities located in the state of Ohio. Furthermore, vendors should have a strong understanding of child maltreatment prevention and measuring prevention, effectiveness of prevention efforts, methods and interventions, and experience in developing logic models pertaining to prevention programming.

The goal of "Copilaria Mea" is to increase the number of children living within appropriate, permanent, and protective family care and reduce the number of children growing up in institutional care. Protective family care envisions care free of deprivation, exploitation and danger. This implies supporting the GOM in completing the deinstitutionalization process and preventing future institutionalization of children through improved policy and regulation; development of services to strengthen family care and prevent unnecessary separation; strengthened gatekeeping; modification of social norms and behaviors within the family that drive family separation; support for implementation of the country's Child Care Reform, with an emphasis on alternative care; and creating sustainable financing models for alternative care models to include the redirection of funds currently financing state child care institutions.

The purpose of this program, which is consistent with language contained in the Joint Explanatory Statement to the Consolidated Appropriations Act of FY 2017, is to fund a study focused on improving child health through a statewide system of early childhood developmental screenings and interventions. This includes improving population level early childhood developmental health outcomes in a state with significant risk factors for poor child health status such as high rates of poverty among children under age 5, high rates of low birthweight infants, and low rates of early childhood developmental screenings. This goal will be achieved through the implementation of a high quality statewide early childhood developmental health system, an evaluative study on best practices, polices and innovations that can serve as a model for other states with high needs, and the development and utilization of an early childhood cross-systems workforce program.