Group items tagged

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.

NIJ is seeking applications for rigorous program evaluation of specific services for victims of crime including housing, legal assistance, and technology-based services. This solicitation is for a planning phase not to exceed a 24 month period of performance.

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 Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) will fund a Quality Improvement Center (QIC) that will support demonstration sites that establish or enhance collaborative community court teams to design, implement and test approaches to meet the requirements of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) of 2010 as amended by the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 (CARA) and that better meet the needs of infants and families affected by substance use disorder and prenatal substance exposure. This FOA is intended to build on and enhance the basic collaborative approach offered by the Quality Improvement Center for Research-Based Infant Toddler Court Teams (QIC-ITCT) to specifically address the needs of infants, young children, and their parents or caregivers affected by substance use disorder. The FOA is intended to produce sustainable approaches and strategies that will be useful nationally in addressing this epidemic.The QIC must support demonstration sites in assessing their current capacity to collaboratively address the health and substance use disorder treatment needs of infants, young children and their parents or caregivers, and create or enhance a continuous quality improvement approach for ensuring that local entities work effectively across systems and best understand whether and in what manner they are providing services in accordance with CARA's state requirements. The demonstration sites must involve intensive collaboration among the child welfare agency, Court Improvement Program, local courts, legal community, substance abuse treatment providers, preventative service providers, mental health providers, medical providers, and other key stakeholders.

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.

The purpose of this program is to enhance the quality and quantity of specialized services available to assist victims of human trafficking, as defined by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, as amended. OVC is interested in supporting programs that focus on one or more of these priority areas: 1) housing services, 2) economic and leadership empowerment and/or education services, 3) mental health services, 4) substance abuse services, and 5) legal services. OVC expects to make up to 20 awards of up to $700,000, with an estimated total amount awarded of up to $14 million. OVC expects to make awards for a 36-month period of performance, to begin on October 1, 2018. OVC will conduct one pre-application webinar on May 31, 2018, from 3:00–4:00 p.m. e.t. Register at www.ovc.gov/grants/webinars.html. Apply by June 27, 2018.