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The Brookdale Foundation is accepting applications for its Relatives as Parents program. Established in 1996, the program aims to develop or expand services for grandparents or other relatives who have taken on the responsibility of surrogate parenting when the biological parents are unable to do so. Through the program, up to fifteen programs will receive seed grants of up to $15,000 to start a new program or expand current services in response to caregiver needs. Services and assistance to relative caregivers and the children in their care must include regular ongoing support, educational or social groups, and at least two of the following: benefits and legal guidance, educational seminars, individual and/or family counseling, health care services, childcare, housing assistance, children's services, group recreational activities, transportation assistance, services to special populations, services with local schools, or mental health services.

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.

In addition to providing respite care and enjoyable group activities that build on the strengths and abilities of participants, the programs offer family caregivers access to services such as counseling, support groups, information and referral, training, and education. With a nationwide network of programs providing regular respite services, the program demonstrates that a cost-effective social model of adult day services can successfully address the special needs of Alzheimer's families. To that end, grants of up to $15,000 will be awarded to up to fifteen Group Respite and Early Memory Loss programs to develop a new dementia-specific social model program. Grant funds may not be used to support or expand the hours, days, or service capacity of existing social, health, or medical model programs or to serve mixed populations. Applications must be received no later than June 27.

THE ADMINISTRATION for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families' Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) announces the availability of funds under the Street Outreach Program (SOP). SOP WORKS to increase young people’s personal safety, social and emotional well-being, self-sufficiency, and to help them build permanent connections with families, communities, schools, and other positive social networks. These services, which are provided in areas where street youth congregate, are designed to assist such youth in making healthy choices and to provide them access to shelter and services which include: outreach, gateway services, screening and assessment, harm reduction, access to emergency shelter, crisis stabilization, drop-in centers, which can be optional, and linkages/referrals to services. THE AWARD process for FY2018 SOP allows for annual awards over a three-year project period, as funds are available.

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Administration for Native Americans (ANA) announces the availability of Fiscal Year 2018 funds for the Native Youth Initiative for Leadership, Empowerment, and Development (I-LEAD).I-LEAD is a special initiative established under ANA’s Social and Economic Development Strategies (SEDS) program. I-LEAD provides support for community-based initiatives that empower Native youth to address priorities identified by such youth and include youth-focused leadership. As well projects are funded to develop models, approaches and strategies to foster resiliency and build upon Native youth's inherent capacities to thrive. Native youth will contribute to the accomplishment of objectives that promote economic and social self-sufficiency for Native Americans, contribute to community well-being, increase the capacity of tribal governments, strengthen families, and implement culturally appropriate strategies to meet the social service needs of Native Americans.As an agency within the ACF, ANA is providing this unique funding opportunity as a special initiative of the SEDS program. The I-LEAD program will ensure project funding is provided to support youth-driven and youth-focused services and activities related to social and economic development, in order to promote the self-sufficiency of tomorrow’s leaders in Native American communities.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) announces the availability of funds for the fiscal year 2018 Direct Services for Survivors of Torture (DS SOT) grant program. The purpose of the DS SOT program is to increase access to strengths-based, trauma-informed services that assist survivors of torture and their families in the healing and recovery process. Under this grant program, direct services are provided to persons who have been tortured on foreign soil under the color of law. The program offers holistic and integrated services including medical, psychological, legal, and social work. All of these services are provided either directly by the grantee or indirectly through partner organizations or affiliates.

Examples of research topics of interest to MCHB include but are not limited to the following: Health care access and continuity of care, including transition into adulthood (e.g., employment and health care); Family engagement and family partnerships; Family well-being, coping, resilience, and social networks; Variations in access to services affecting family functioning in diverse populations; Service systems and infrastructure including: characterizing the current ASD diagnostic and service utilization patterns in community settings, examining the relationship between diagnosis and services availability for ASD, and evaluating services and intervention outcomes; Increasing identification of ASD including Aspergers in diverse populations, including ethnic minorities and girls; Safety issues including wandering from residential and educational settings.

The Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) supports a national Training and Technical Assistance effort designed to enhance and promote the continuous evidence based quality improvement of services with a focus on the social and emotional well being of children, youth and families served by FYSB funded runaway and homeless youth grantees. FYSB expects to award one cooperative agreement to enhance the programmatic and administrative capacities of public and private agencies to provide services to the targeted populations. Applicants will be expected to provide evidence of their ability to provide services to all grantees of the Administration of Children and Families (ACF) Federal geographic regional locations. Applicants must serve all ten ACF Federal Regions and may include subcontractors to provide services that will cover the regional multi-State areas. This funding opportunity is a 36 month project with three 12-month budget periods.

This announcement's synopsis has been updated. The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) invites applications from eligible entities to apply for funds to support a social science researcher (the proposed Principal Investigator) to become a member of the Family Self-Sufficiency and Stability Research Network (the Network). The goal of the Network is to support productive partnerships between social science scholars and state or local human services agencies. As such, applicants are required to demonstrate a partnership or potential partnership with one or more state or local human services agency responsible for administering benefits or programming to assist and support family self-sufficiency, including close coordination with the agency responsible for administering the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, as an integral part of their research plan development and execution. In addition to supporting the proposed Principal Investigator (PI) to pursue their individual programs of rigorous and relevant research, entities must also support PIs in participating in a multidisciplinary learning community by collaborating with other members of the Network funded under this announcement. For more information on the previous cohort of scholars and their work, please see: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/resource/family-self-sufficiency-and-stability-scholars-2013-grantees and the most recent year-in-review: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/opre/resource/family-self-sufficiency-and-stability-research-consortium-year-in-review-2017 Initial awards will be made for the first 12-month budget period; annual continuation awards for the four remaining 12-month budget periods will be awarded subject to the availability of funds, satisfactory progress by the grantee, and a determination that continued funding would be in the interest of the federal gove

The purpose of the Jobs Plus Pilot program is to develop locally-based, job-driven approaches to increase earnings and advance employment outcomes through work readiness, employer linkages, job placement, educational advancement, technology skills, and financial literacy for residents of public housing. The place-based Jobs Plus Pilot program addresses poverty among public housing residents by incentivizing and enabling employment through earned income disregards for working families, and a set of services designed to support work including employer linkages, job placement and counseling, educational advancement, and financial counseling. Ideally, these incentives will saturate the target developments, building a culture of work and making working families the norm. The Jobs Plus Pilot program consists of the following three core components: Employment-Related Services Financial Incentives – Jobs Plus Earned Income Disregard (JPEID) Community Supports for Work Applicants are encouraged to develop key partnerships to connect participants with any other needed services to remove barriers to work. An Individualized Training and Services Plan (ITSP) should be developed for each participant to establish goals and service strategies, and to track progress. Background HUD, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the MDRC, through a public-private partnership, designed and supported the Jobs Plus program model between 1998 and 2003. HUD has issued two separate evaluation reports on the demonstration, in an effort to identify and document the most promising approaches to increasing employment among families in public housing. Each evaluation showed ongoing positive effects for residents when the program was well-implemented and included the three core elements.

1) Access to Services: The foundation provides funding for community organizations and schools that are providing vital resources and actively assisting children with autism spectrum disorder and their families through education and technology, advocacy programs, diagnostic and clinical services, direct family support, safety equipment, emergency care, respite services, and other opportunities that will enhance the quality of life for those affected. 2) Active Lifestyle: The foundation provides support for recreational and sports programs, aquatic programs, social skills training, family events and summer camps for all individuals on the autism spectrum. 3) Adult Community-Based Services: The foundation supports opportunities in the areas of job training, vocational skills programs, employment, housing, transportation, and healthcare delivery for adults on the autism spectrum.

1) Access to Services: The foundation provides funding for community organizations and schools that are providing vital resources and actively assisting children with autism spectrum disorder and their families through education and technology, advocacy programs, diagnostic and clinical services, direct family support, safety equipment, emergency care, respite services, and other opportunities that will enhance the quality of life for those affected. 2) Active Lifestyle: The foundation provides support for recreational and sports programs, aquatic programs, social skills training, family events and summer camps for all individuals on the autism spectrum. 3) Adult Community-Based Services: The foundation supports opportunities in the areas of job training, vocational skills programs, employment, housing, transportation, and healthcare delivery for adults on the autism spectrum.  

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.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Questioning (LGBTQ) victims of intimate partner, domestic, and/or dating violence do not have consistent access to culturally competent services to prevent and address such violence. Domestic/intimate partner violence is a significant health problem among LGBTQ populations and has serious physical health, mental health, and social consequences for its victims, their families, the LGBTQ communities, and society-at-large. The intent of this Family Violence Prevention and Services Capacity-Building Demonstration grant program is to expand the capacity of both “mainstream” domestic violence organizations and LGBTQ-specific organizations to more effectively identify and address the unique needs of LGBTQ intimate partner violence victims. The successful applicant will be expected to identify and inform LGBTQ-specific prevention and intervention strategies, including screening and on-going assessment that can be replicated in local domestic violence and LGBTQ programs. Many service providers throughout the United States struggle to understand the complexities associated with identifying, serving, and supporting LGBTQ populations.

THE ADMINISTRATION for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and Families' Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) announces the availability of funds under the Transitional Living Program (TLP) and Maternity Group Home (MGH). THE PURPOSE of FYSB’s TLP and MGH grant programs are to implement, enhance, and/or support effective strategies for successful transition to sustainable living for runaway and homeless youth ages 16 to under 22 and/or pregnant and parenting youth ages 16 to under 22 and their dependent child(ren). Both projects must provide safe, stable, and appropriate shelter for 18 months and, under extenuating circumstances, can be extended to 21 months and provide comprehensive services that supports the transition of homeless youth to self-sufficiency and stable, independent living. Through the provision of shelter and an array of comprehensive services, TLP youth will realize improvements in four core outcome areas (i.e., safe and stable housing, education/employment, permanent connections, and social and emotional well-being.) GRANTS AWARDED under this announcement will have a start date of May 1, 2018 and the project period will be 41 months. The initial award will be for 17 months and run from May 1, 2018 through September 29, 2019.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) is accepting applications for fiscal year (FY) 2018 Strategic Prevention Framework - Partnerships for Success grants. The purpose of this grant program is to address one of the nation's top substance abuse prevention priorities; underage drinking among persons aged 9 to 20. At their discretion, states/tribes may also use grant funds to target up to two additional, data-driven substance abuse prevention priorities, such as the use of marijuana, cocaine, or methamphetamine, etc. by individuals ages 9 and above. SPF-PFS is designed to ensure that prevention strategies and messages reach the populations most impacted by substance abuse. The program extends current established cross-agency and community-level partnerships by connecting substance abuse prevention programming to departments of social services and their community service providers. This includes working with populations disproportionately impacted by the consequences of substance use; i.e., children entering the foster care system, transitional youth, and individuals that support persons with substance abuse issues (women, families, parents, caregivers, and young adults).

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 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), is responsible for providing Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education (including breastfeeding promotion and support) for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk. The legislative authority for this grant announcement is contained in the Child Nutrition Act of 1966 Section 17 (g) (5)[1] as amended and Section 1472 of the National Agriculture Research, Extension, and Teaching Policy Act of 1977, 7 U.S.C. 3318, codified at 7 CFR 2.19(a)(3)(x) in January 2009. This is an announcement of the availability of funds for one new cooperative agreement for FY 2017-2019 with a public or private Academic or Research Institution. In this funding cycle, the USDA anticipates awarding up to $1,000,000 in grant funding to support the creation of a Participant Research Innovation Laboratory for administering and awarding sub-grants for researcher-initiated projects that develop and test strategies to encourage retention of children in WIC. Developed strategies should focus on WIC service delivery sites or retail environments. Further, strategies must acknowledge the social and cultural diversity of WIC participants and those eligible for the Program.

The Brookdale Foundation Group works to advance the fields of geriatrics and gerontology and to improve the lives of senior citizens. The Foundation's Relatives as Parents Program provides support for the creation or expansion of services for grandparents and other relatives who have taken on the responsibility of surrogate parenting when the biological parents are unable to do so. Funded programs must include supportive services to relative caregivers and the children they are raising, with emphasis on families that are not in the formal foster care system. Programs must also include regular ongoing support, and educational or social groups for relative caregivers and the children in their care. Up to 15 programs will receive a seed grant of $15,000 ($10,000 and $5,000 respectively), contingent on progress made during year one and potential for continuity in the future. Nonprofit organizations from throughout the country are eligible to apply. (State agencies in selected states may also apply.) The application deadline is June 13, 2018. Visit the Brookdale Foundation Group's website to download the guidelines and application forms.

The PAF program provides support for States and tribes to develop and implement programs to improve the educational, health, and social outcomes for expectant and parenting teens, women, fathers and their families. The PAF program provides funding to States and tribes to establish, maintain, or operate life-affirming services for expectant and parenting teens, women, fathers and their families in high schools, community service centers, and Institutions of Higher Education.